Trust-based Selling Finding And Keeping Customers For Life.pdf

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Contents About the Author����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� vii Introduction����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ix Chapter 1: Trust������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 1 Chapter 2: Identify the Silent Sales Killers���������������������������������������������13 Chapter 3: The Buyer Process�����������������������������������������������������������������29 Chapter 4: The Sales Process�������������������������������������������������������������������37 Chapter 5: Trust Sales Cycle���������������������������������������������������������������������43 Chapter 6:

Build Business Relationships �������������������������������������������������51

Chapter 7: Understand the Sales Equation���������������������������������������������61 Chapter 8:

Building Trustworthiness �������������������������������������������������������69

Chapter 9: Niche Selling���������������������������������������������������������������������������83 Chapter 10: Power in Sales�������������������������������������������������������������������������95 Chapter 11: Selling Strategies �������������������������������������������������������������������99 Chapter 12: Building Trust Before Opportunity�������������������������������������113 Chapter 13: Qualif ying and Developing Opportunity ���������������������������125 Chapter 14: Defense ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������137 Index�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������143

Introduction Tom is a new salesperson about three months into his job.Tom was promoted from within the company because he was the number one inside salesperson. His job was cold calling to set appointments for the outside sales team. He is diligent, hardworking, and already understands the company and its products. One day, he is out to lunch with some colleagues, and one of the more senior reps asks, “How are things going, Tom?” His reply, “Things are great, I have been on many appointments. My boss is happy with the number of customers I have been in front of. My pipeline is very strong. I have not booked my first order yet, but I am excited. My second quarter will be huge!” “How many customers have you visited?” the senior rep continues. “Close to 25,” says Tom. The senior rep is impressed; this is a large number of appointments for his industry, so it’s clear he is working hard. So far, it sounds like everything is great. High activity, opportunities in his pipeline, a happy manager; the only thing missing is some closed business. Three months go by, and Tom walks into the senior rep’s office. He asks Tom the same question, “How are you doing?” “Well, quite a few of my deals pushed [moved to the next quarter] or fell through this quarter, but my pipeline is even bigger, and Q3 will be huge.” “Tom, how does your boss feel?” He replies, “I can tell he is a bit more concerned with the numbers. He loves my pipeline, but he is pushing me to start closing some of this business.” “What is his advice?” “Keep pursuing leads. He says keep my pipeline strong, and deals will come.” The senior rep asks, “How many customers have you visited?” “Maybe another 25 this quarter. Marketing is great—they keep the leads coming.” The senior rep then asks, “What are your top opportunities?”

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Introduction Tom lists some companies. The senior rep recognizes that from a geography standpoint, he is often driving three hours in one direction, then four hours in another direction. He asks Tom, “Why are you driving all over the place?” “My boss wants me running down the opportunities on these leads.” “So you have been in front of 50 different customers? How many different opportunities are you working?” The answer is an impressive 40. The senior rep is starting to spot a trend. Tom is working on more opportunities than the senior rep himself. And he knows that in this industry, you can make your living with 10 accounts. So, he leads Tom by asking, “Tom, which of the 50 customers have you qualified as your best?” Tom is confused, “What do you mean?” “I mean where are you spending your time? Which customers are getting your time?” “I have been following up leads, and trying close these deals, so pretty much where I have opportunity.” Instead of pointing out an issue, he gives Tom some direct advice, “Go back through the list of accounts you have visited, and figure out which customers are a fit for our company and for you. Note where they have money, where there is change, where they have aging IT infrastructure, and where you felt you had a good personal fit. You need to start establishing relationships and building trust with these customers.” Tom nods; the advice seems to make sense. But he’s sure some of the leads he gets each week will take care of the problem. Another quarter goes by, and he walks into the senior rep’s office one more time. The rep asks, “How are things going?” “Not so good,” says Tom. “I barely closed anything last quarter. I had three large deals that we thought we had won, but we lost them to price at the last minute. My pipeline has shrunk. We cannot figure out what is going on, so my boss is starting to think I must be lazy, or I am just not a closer.” “Did you take my advice and identify your ‘go-to’ customers?” “Well, no. I have been too busy trying to close deals.” This story does not have a happy ending. Tom was let go a few weeks later. How do you go from a hard-working inside sales rock star to being fired as a salesperson? He worked hard and had a strong pipeline, so why was he not closing business?

Introduction

What Happened? Tom is brand new to outside sales, and he was simply following the advice of his management team. This issue points out a fundamental flaw in sales process—poor sales training and coaching. Most sales training is based on sales skills or process. The problem is that most processes start with an opportunity, but they do not hit the fundamentals of new account penetration. This book is aimed at building a foundation for new sales professionals, and getting the seasoned professional back to basics after they’ve lost their way. (This is nothing to be ashamed of; it has happened to me and other sales professionals whose techniques, for one reason or another, became ineffective. Read on for the story of how Peyton Manning had to return to the fundamentals.) The approach that Tom took is how most salespeople approach starting a new sales role. The company trains them on its top-selling products. They are given a list of accounts or a territory, some sales training based on skills or process, a laptop, and a phone. The advice—from managers, books, seminars, and other sources of sales training—for starting typically goes something like this: “Work hard, get in front of as many customers a possible, work your leads, find opportunities, and close business. Go hunt!” If the salesperson is “lucky,” he is probably given a common strategy. “Your goal is $5,000,000 in revenue. This equates to $1,250,000 per quarter. We close 30% of our deals. So you should have $4,200,000 in potential revenue in your pipeline at any time.” In other words, find as many opportunities as possible; keep your pipeline full. The sarcasm in that last statement was not meant to insult the many managers who have used that advice. I have used that advice myself in the past. On the surface is seems like perfect common sense. However, as you start to dig into why customers buy, look at the most important asset a new salesperson has (time), and understand why managers push for pipeline much greater than quota, you learn that this logic hurts more than it helps. As this book will show, the senior rep in the previous story has the right idea about how to succeed: identify the most likely accounts, develop relationships, and build trust. But Tom—and most of the Toms in the sales world—doesn’t hear this kind of advice often enough.

Not Just for Rookies: Fundamentals Matter Just recently, NFL quarterback Peyton Manning broke the record for the most career touchdowns thrown by a quarterback. Following the game, he did a quick on-field interview. His message struck a chord with me. He was asked why he has been even more successful after being out for a year with a neck

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Introduction injury. When he started his journey back, he could hardly throw a ball. In NFL years, he is—at 38 (in early 2015)—an old man. And, you know the old saying, “You can’t teach an old dog a new trick.” Personally, I was expecting him to say, that the Denver Broncos, the team he joined after his injury, surrounded him with players that are there to support his type of offense. But his reply, which I am paraphrasing, surprised me: “When I started throwing the ball again, I called my old coach to help me get back to my pre-injury form. We went right back to the fundamentals—arm mechanics, foot work, movement in the pocket, etc. I believe that getting back to the basic fundamentals has helped me become a better quarterback.” And, by all measures Peyton, at the age of 38, came back better than he was pre-injury. I think any sales professional can learn a lot from Peyton Manning. Over time we all develop bad habits, or start to get lazy with process, or the basics of selling. While this book is about the basics of selling, even the seasoned professional can further their results by refreshing the foundation of their strategies, process, skills and tactics.

Why I Wrote This Book I have been a salesperson and sales manager, among other sales-related jobs, my entire career. My experience has been mostly in the IT industry. You will find many real-life examples and stories from multiple industries in this book, but the majority comes from the industry in which I spent my career. As you’ll see, the advice is universal. Many of the examples come from when I was with a VAR, or value-added reseller. If the tactics and strategies work with a VAR, they will work for any B2B sales person. Resellers find it difficult to differentiate themselves from competitors. By definition, they do not have their own products. There are multiple companies in the same territory selling the identical products from the same vendors. This leaves the salesperson as the main differentiator to the customer. Veteran salespeople therefore learn early on that developing good relationships is the key to success. While most salespeople are concentrating on their products, the customer is looking at the salesperson and thinking, “Can I trust this person?” And that is the same in any industry. As you will see, the sales skills and strategies needed to succeed in this industry translate to any B2B sales environment. When I started this book, I was a regional manager at an information technology (IT) reseller, or VAR. It was this new role as a regional manager that actually prompted me to write this book. I was given a territory that at one point had been one of the most successful regions in our company. Throughout the years, five salespeople were all at, or above, their quotas. However, in the two–three years prior to my taking over the region, we had turned over most of the team more than once. Our partners had lost faith in our company, and our customers were concerned about the health of the

Introduction company due to the turnover of the sales force. This territory could support five to six salespeople. I only had three salespeople left and they were a mixed bag of experience, work ethic, and skills. One was experienced and performing, one had very little sales skill and was unwilling to learn, and the third was for the most part not showing up. So, my first job, which is not always easy, was to let the latter two go. My uphill battle continued: • I had one salesperson, but I carried a quota for five salespeople • I had to hire four new salespeople, and finding the right people takes time • We had damaged customer relationships • In the IT industry, as a VAR, it is not unheard of for a salesperson to take six months to get their first order • It typically takes up to 12 months, if not longer, for a new salesperson to match pace with their monthly quota I wanted to make money in my first year. I did not want to take the long ramp period as the definitive truth. I turned to several sales books I had purchased over the years. Our company was a user of SPI’s Solution Selling, but their process started with the first sales call, and I knew that there was an uphill battle getting first appointments. I reached out to colleagues whom I trusted in sales management roles, but the advice was pretty much the same: train the best you can, cold call, follow up on leads, and drive the pipeline. The main advice—or the belief—for success was to drive high activity. I always held the belief that high activity was important, but the wrong activity is purely a waste of time. I needed to identify which activities would help my reps start producing in the short term. Lastly, I turned to personal experience. Before becoming a regional manager, I had worked as an account manager for this company for four years. Before that, I was a territory salesperson for two large, fast-growing manufacturers and a large VAR. I personally have ramped seven sales territories with varying degrees of success. (Of course, like any salesperson, I have had my share of losses, which I will be sharing with you as well.) However, I never stopped to think about why some territories never took off, why some took years to ramp, and why some were successful from the start. What was the common thread? What worked and what didn’t? Why did 80% of our salespeople close an average of only five deals their first year? I quickly learned that it had nothing to do with work ethic, as with Tom. I witnessed some of the hardest-working salespeople fail miserably. And my experience prompted additional questions: Why did only 20% of new hires reach quota? Why, in my most successful territory, did it take me four months to get my first order and why, by the end of the year, was I pulling in more

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Introduction business per month than most of the other salespeople at the company? Why did some of my own territories fail? This desire to understand the first year of sales also led me to thoroughly research the science of selling, including buyer psychology, seller psychology, sales process, sales techniques, and behavioral change. During the process of writing this book, I gained even more confidence as a salesperson and sales manager. In good conscience, and to be able to provide all the advice this book contains, I used the process I developed and outline here. I took a direct sales role with a new company. The new territory was a challenge and the previous two salespeople had failed by any metric you measure. They made very few sales, and secured perhaps two or three new accounts in about two years. In my first year, my sales engineer and I secured sales with approximately 40 new customers and finished at 230% of our annual quota. While this is a small data set, I proved to myself that I was on to something with the system you are about to learn.

Traditional Sales Training Does Not Work Here is the dirty little secret of sales training: Sales training and materials are developed to be sold, not developed to work. This may sound a bit harsh, but let’s analyze the most popular topics of sales training. Sales books and training come in all shapes and sizes, but 80% of it falls into two categories: • Sales skills • Sales processes Here’s what I have learned and what the book will show you: Your success does not depend on your ability to manage opportunities, your ability to close, or your ability to “wow” with presentations. This is a bold statement, but it’s true. Salespeople with average skills can be very successful with the proper strategy. Most sales training, in contrast, concentrates on improving a salesperson’s selling skills. I believe this is a lazy approach by management. Managers feel they need to do something to improve sales. So, they train the sales team on skills and expect better results. This simply does not work. Management sees that the training does not work and they turn back to the trainers for help. The recommendation to solve this problem is, if they don’t “get it” the first time, use repetition. Role

Introduction play. Repeat over and over again. It sounds like common sense. The sales training community pushes the idea because it can sell more training time and materials to their customers. Sales management buys into this because it is easy to blame the salesperson for not “getting it.” They never stop to ask whether the salespeople are being tasked and managed effectively. You have probably seen this in training classes you have taken. You have a great teacher who motivates you. You are excited about everything you are learning. It all makes perfect sense. You role play over and over again until you have memorized the process. Then what happens when you get back in front of the customer? The ego kicks in. You now have something at stake, and you revert to your core ego-driven personality. Ask yourself: Has sales training ever improved your skills? If so, you are in the top 5% of self-aware people. Someone needs to be completely self-aware to make significant change in personality. I am no different. As I have already stated, I have read hundreds of sales books over my career, and I have taken multiple trainings, including some of the most popular training courses in the industry. It took me 10 years to realize I was one of the “talkers” who did not listen to customers enough. It has taken me an additional 10 years to improve on this bad personality trait. While I continue to improve, I am sure a 20-year return on investment is not the result anyone is looking for. You want to see improvement today, not years from now. The next area that is popular with sales training is the sales process. Again, the end customer is the VP of sales. One of their main responsibilities is to forecast accurately at a company level. Forecast accuracy is vital to the running of any company. Companies need to execute on business planning, and Wall Street is looking for revenue expectations. A good process should • Help the sales force forecast more accurately. • Drive proper selling behavior. Most processes on the market are so cumbersome that management stops using them. However, at the end of the day, most companies hold on to old processes to justify the massive investment in tools. Salespeople are stuck using just the reporting aspects of the process, but selling productivity seldom increases. This example highlights the issue of training focused in the wrong area.

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The Charles Barkley Effect A perfect example of the difficulty of overcoming ego is The Haney Project. Hank Haney is considered the one of the best golf instructors in the world. He has a television series on the Golf Channel, and each season, he takes one amateur and works with them to improve their golf game. The first season is a classic. His amateur is ex-NBA star Charles Barkley. Charles’s “natural” swing is horrid. He has glitches, stops in the middle of the down swing, and literally looks like he is going fall over every time he swings a golf club. (If you want see this swing, take, Google “Charles Barkley + golf swing.” Hank teaches the skill—how to swing the club—like we try to teach sales skills. They go to the driving range and practice and practice until Charles has a decently smooth swing. This practice is like sales role play. Then they go back on the golf course (the sales call), where the swing needs to produce results, and where there are consequences. What happens? The same horrid swing reemerges, as do your day-to-day sales skills. Why? Because under pressure, the subconscious mind takes over. The same thing happens to selling skills when you get back in front of a customer.

Skills vs. Strategy Selling skills are of course important. Improper selling skills will hinder your ability to execute some of the fundamental strategies in this book. But let me be clear: the quickest road to better sales results is by shifting your strategy. And that’s exactly what this book shows you how to do. It has some selling techniques, some skills training, and some process, but majority is based on a strategy anyone can implement. Let’s go back to the golf example. If you are an amateur golfer, you can spend months on the driving range with a golf pro, and maybe see a one- or two-stroke improvement. Or, you can go buy Jack Nicklaus’s book, Golf My Way, which teaches nothing but shot preparation and golf course management. You learn how to aim at the right location, how to set up for the golf swing, how to aim away from trouble, which holes to attack, and which holes to play cautiously. He teaches you how to get the most out of your game regardless of your skill level. With these new strategies, you will see a five-six stroke improvement your first time back out on the golf course. And, they do not require you to improve your golf swing at all. This is the difference between strategy and skill. You can work the strategies in this book in conjunction with the more popular methods like Solution Selling or the Challenger Sale. As with golf, I want the quick strategies to help my game today. But, I also continually work on the skills and methods that will improve my game in the long run. I believe you should do this as well.

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You Picked the Right Book If you want to sell more, you have picked up the right book. It will not require you to deal with uncomfortable role play. It will not require you to change how you talk to your customers. It will not require you to change how you sell. The strategies it contains do not require you to change your personality. Instead, they help change the focus of your efforts, and they produce results. Specifically, this book is intended to teach you the correct methods for gaining access and getting the all-important first order with new customers. You learn how to start building trust before you meet with the customer, how to engage new customers, how to message, how to identify real opportunities you can close, win new customers, and how to keep these customers for life.

Roadmap to the Book Here is what you will learn from this book: • The major obstacles that plague most salespeople trying to acquire new accounts • How customers make purchasing decisions • A sales process to align with the buyer • How focusing strictly on opportunity will sabotage your success • Skills and strategies for qualifying customers and opportunities • Which prospects are worth your time, and which ones to cut loose • Which products and services in your portfolio will give the greatest odds of success • How to identify prospects who are ready to buy today • How to become the trusted, and therefore the preferred, vendor for potential opportunities • How to manage and forecast opportunities • How to keep won customers indefinitely

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Introduction In short, you will learn how to win and keep new customers through proper strategy. Let’s get started. Disclaimer: This book is an abridgement of my first book, Sales Hunting. This is a scaled-down version that concentrates on the basics of sales, not hunting (opening up new territory) specifically. We cut out chapters to make the book more streamlined for today’s busy professional. The chapters that remain were take almost verbatim from Sales Hunting. If by chance you have bought both books, please contact me and we’ll come up with an accommodation.

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1 Trust The Grease for Sales Success Technique and technology are important, but adding trust is the issue of the decade. —Tom Peters Yet another book on trust? I know there are several books on sales that discuss trust as a foundation of a selling. However, there is a huge disconnect between the sales processes most companies use today, and reality of selling. Everyone talks about building rapport, but then demonstrate how do this in two minutes at the beginning of a sales call. Trust is not earned in two minutes; it is a continual process that should never stop with your customer. My goal for this book is to educate you on the importance of developing trust, introduce trust into the sales process, help you develop methods for developing trust over time, and how to maintain trust. In order to drive home the importance of trust, I will lean toward new account acquisition—situations in which you are starting with zero trust from the customer. The lessons you learn here will, of course, apply to all levels of selling and at all times in your career.

The Ultimate Goal and How It Intersects with Trust What is your primary role as a salesperson? It’s to drive revenue for your company, so the lights can stay on and payroll can be met. While this is true, it immediately points the selling process toward disaster for most salespeople and managers. Conventional thinking is that leads turn into opportunities, opportunities turn into purchase orders, purchase orders turn into invoices,

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Chapter 1 | Trust and invoices turn into cash flow. So, where do most sales processes start? Where does most management inspection happen? You guessed right—at opportunity. We will discuss why this is a recipe for disaster in detail in the coming chapters. For now, let me say that your goal should not be to find and close as many opportunities as possible. Your goal should be to become the customer’s trusted advisor. Without any trust there is no sale, and with trusted advisor status there is no competition. You don’t need to achieve that status in order to win your first opportunity, but why not aim high? The phrase “trusted advisor” is, however, thrown around too easily. At one company I worked for, we had an account-planning worksheet. The form was used to rate the level of relationship with the customer. The options were: • No engagement • Engaged without first order • Doing some business • Vendor • Preferred vendor • Trusted advisor I sat through quarterly business reviews for approximately 40 salespeople. We reviewed several accounts for each. Almost half the accounts were marked as trusted advisors. Many of the accounts we reviewed had been through one sales cycle and our company won the business. Management never once challenged the salesperson on the trusted advisor designation. Finally, I could not take it anymore and asked a couple of salespeople to define their definition of trusted advisor. “Well, when the customer wants to buy widget X, they purchase from us.” Or, “I have a customer security badge.” Neither suggests trusted advisor status. Trusted advisor is a simple concept; your customer includes you in their business-planning sessions. Acme Technologies is looking to expand manufacturing into South America. Are you at the table with the customer when they are strategizing the feasibility of this expansion? Are you treated like an extension of the company? Do you have the ability to add value above and beyond the customer’s team? If the answer is yes, you are a trusted advisor. Do not confuse this with being told they are expanding, and then being asked to quote something to support that initiative. This status is closer to preferred vendor. A trusted advisor is not the “relationship” guy or the “people person.” Relationship being an all-encompassing word, it is worth pointing out that I am talking about a business relationship, a valued business relationship. I am not talking about the guy the customer likes. This is not the vendor who buys lunch all the time. It’s the vendor who is part of the customer’s team, at a peer

Trust-Based Selling level, the person who brings value. If an employee is not offering value, he is not part of that company very long, no matter how much he is liked. Same goes with salespeople. You are an extension of the customer team. They are looking for someone they can trust and gain value from. Being the trusted advisor is a lofty goal that you may never get to, but one you should strive for. So, what is the operative word in trusted advisor? Trusted. Your goal should be to establish trust. Trust starts before you set foot in the door and is hopefully strengthened by every step you take with your customers. What do I mean by trust? In a sales relationship, the seller must demonstrate the core elements of trust. The customer from the beginning will judge you on these trust characteristics. They are: • Intent • Capability • Dedication • Results Let’s define each of these in detail.

Intent Proper intent makes sales a noble profession. There are so many negative stereotypes regarding sales, all of which come from salespeople with wrong intentions. The major theme of this book, shifting from opportunity focus to customer focus, is a shift of intention. I never thought I would be in sales. I am an educated electrical engineer. I was a nuclear-trained naval officer. I was waiting for a job to open up in a local nuclear power plant when I took an “interim” sales position 20 years ago. My father was a salesman in the 1970s and 1980s. He always wanted me to do better. So, when I started to sell, and the engineering position I was waiting for didn’t open up, I felt stuck in sales. It took me years to realize that sales is a great profession. When I changed my intention from “sell them something” to becoming a salesperson who wanted to educate and help my customers, my outlook on my career changed, and my sales results skyrocketed. My dayto-day interactions did not change, and my skills did not change overnight, but that small shift in attitude allowed my customers to perceive better intent. Your customers know your intentions. They see it in the first two minutes of conversation. Are you there to help them or to sell them something?

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Chapter 1 | Trust If you are there to help them, you will sell them something, and if you are there to sell them something, they will help you directly out the door. Intention and sales skills are tied at the hip.  “We tend to judge ourselves by our intentions; we tend to judge others by their behavior.” —Stephen M. Covey

If you are talking non-stop about your product or service, the perception from your customer will be that you are there just to sell something. If you truly get to know the customer, by understanding their needs first, the customer’s perception of your intent is to help them. If you lack the necessary skills to ask questions and listen, your first step in changing that behavior is to have good intention. Most people believe they are of good character, and that they have proper intent, but your customer can only see your behavior. If you care, you will listen. First and foremost, the customer must perceive you are there to help them. They want to see you are truly listening to their needs. Do you have a hidden agenda or do you have the best interest of all parties in mind? Your intent is to drive value for the customer. We have all heard the 80/20 rule of sales—80 percent of sales are done by 20 percent of the sales team. Nothing is more powerful in putting you in the top 20 percent than proper intention.

Capability Do you have the necessary skills, knowledge, competence, and abilities to help your customer? In the ever-changing world of sales, capability is increasingly important. Your customers are inundated by requests for their time, both internal to their organization and externally by sales professionals. They want to learn from their vendors and will make time if they believe you have the capability. You must demonstrate competence. You must show industry and product knowledge. All too often, the focus for sales management is about understanding the features and benefits of your products. It is much more than that. You must demonstrate that you understand how business is done—budgets, project timelines, decision processes, and so on. Are you capable of educating your customers on better ways they can do things? Do you show a propensity to drive results? Do you drive thought leadership? Can you get the customer to rethink their current way of doing things? In other words, do you bring value as an individual? Does your company bring value? Do the products or services bring value?

Trust-Based Selling Your capability as a salesperson is directly tied to your ability to show proper intention. Are you skilled in sales; do you ask the right questions; are the questions good; do you show you care? Capability is the one area you can control most since there is a wealth of knowledge you can tap into, from peers, managers, the internet, and even customers.While you show capability in front of the customer, it is developed on your own time without pressure. You do not have to be all-knowing. You can show your competence by being a good resource manager. If you lack in any knowledge area, you can utilize others to fill the gaps. That’s why you should use the resources at your disposal— engineers, managers, partners, and subject matter experts.

Dedication Customers want you to demonstrate as much effort toward their success as they do. They want salespeople who follow through on promises. They want salespeople who can help drive the sales process. They have needs that must be filled, and sometimes they are so busy they rely on their salespeople to keep them on track with their own projects. Are you diligent with helping the customer? Are you dependable? Do you take control of the situation? Do you push through with the decision process? Do you follow through with your commitments? Are you dedicated to your own solution? I ask those questions, because trust, and especially dedication, is about character. If you show weak character in any area of the sales process, you lose the confidence of your customers. The classic place this happens is during negotiations. Most salespeople take the attitude that they must give in to every customer demand, and every pricing request. They believe that is the way to earn customer trust and loyalty. In fact, this weak behavior actually has the opposite effect. What you are showing them is that you don’t believe in the value of your own services, and you lack commitment and dedication to your own company. The customer might be happy that they get better terms and conditions they are looking for, but they will slowly lose their trust of you. Of course, negotiations require compromise, but you must demonstrate strength throughout the process. All your actions make up your character, which determines the trust your customers have for you. If you are playing golf with your customer and bend the rules, your customer notices. Every aspect of your character counts, so always think through the message you are sending to your customer. While it’s important to remain dedicated to helping the customer, you cannot forget to protect the value of your time, product, or company. Giving in on price, for example, can actually hurt you as much as getting caught cheating at golf.

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Chapter 1 | Trust

Intention is shown, capabilities are demonstrated, results are measured, but dedication is where you earn the trust of your customer.

Results You must deliver the results you promised. You must deliver on time. In order to be fully trusted, you need to measure the return on investment you said would be achieved with your solution. Ultimately it doesn’t matter what your intentions are, how dedicated you are, or how smart you are; in the end you must be able to deliver results. The reason you are there is to help strengthen some aspect of the customer’s business. You buy a used car. The salesperson and everyone at the dealership were incredibly helpful; they listened to your needs and were instantly able to find a car that fit your requirements perfectly. They knew every specification and feature of every car you discussed. The salesperson understood the purchase process, including leasing, financing, trade-ins, titling, and delivery. You feel that you worked out a very fair deal on the car. In other words, you saw impeccable intent, capability, and dedication. You drive five miles down the road and the car stalls. How do you feel about this salesperson and this dealership now? Without results, nothing else matters. You are not in direct control of the results your company can deliver. However, the act of measuring results— good, bad, or indifferent—will go a long way toward building trust. The act of measuring results can be just as important as great results. Most salespeople, or companies, do no take the time to measure and share results. I believe most people are afraid to measure, because they are afraid the results might not be as desired. Your customers know whether they are getting value from your solution. By taking the step to measure results, you show you are dedicated to their success. If the results are great, you are in good shape. If the results are bad, you have identified something that needs to be addressed. You will gain more trust by fixing any issues. A discussion about results can seem a bit out of place in a book about penetrating new accounts. It is true that measurement of results will help you with repeat business with a customer. However, if you know results are an important part of trust, you must figure out a way to show results before a sale. I will discuss many ways this can be done.

Trust-Based Selling

It All Matters When developing trust, you are building a sense of power with the customer. Ask yourself, whom do you trust in a crisis situation? Do you trust the person who makes sure that everyone is comfortable, or do you trust the person who takes control? Authority is powerful. Authority is powerful in sales. While you cannot change your personality, as already mentioned, authority is built as you build on the trust elements. Knowledge will also give you confidence, which leads to trust and authority. Confidence is important in many aspects of a sale: • Confidence in pointing out issues your customer might face. • Confidence in your solution. • Confidence to have a peer-level relationship with your customer. You don’t cater to their every whim. • Confidence to stick to the value of what you are selling and not always giving in on price. • Confidence in driving your customers to make progress toward their goals. Each trust element is crucial. If you are missing any one of them, you are not completely trusted. Analyze each of these elements as if you are missing one. It does not matter if you have the best intent, and are capable and dedicated, if you can’t deliver results. Customers are looking for results. If you can produce results, but your intent is only to sell the customers something, they will sense that you do not have their best interest at heart. Trust will not be established. To establish full trust, each element needs to be addressed. You can go through the exercise on your own. Think through situations where three of the trust elements are satisfied, but one is left out. Think to yourself, “Do I fully trust this person to deliver for me?” These are the qualities your customers are looking for in a trusted advisor. Figure 1-1 shows your goal with customers.

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Chapter 1 | Trust

Dedication

Demonstrated

Intent

Wants to Help

Capability

Demonstrated

Results

Measured

Figure 1-1. What customers need from the sales team

The trust meter (Figure 1-2) for the trusted vendor is full. That means you have demonstrated or measured each element. It is okay to show how you have delivered results for another customer, but it is critical that you demonstrate you can produce measureable results for them. They need to be shown, not just told. I will use this pie chart as a trust meter. Figure 1-2 shows a completely shaded, or full, trust meter.

Dedication

Intent

Capability

Results

Figure 1-2.  Full trust meter

During the buyer’s status quo stage, they have vendors they are already doing business with. Each of these vendors has developed a certain level of trust. Although they may not be at trusted advisor status, or have all four core trust elements in proper alignment, you must assume they are farther along than you.

Trust-Based Selling Your alignment stage to the buyer’s status quo is plan and target. The incumbent vendor has demonstrated integrity, has shown their intent is to care, has solved problems, and has measured results. Figure 1-3 shows what your customer thinks of you when they hear a voicemail from you, or you are on your first sales call. Dedication

Not Demonstrated

Intent

Want to Sell Something

Capability

Not Demonstrated

Results

No History

Figure 1-3.  Customer perception of a new salesperson

As a new vendor, the customer has no trust in you. Your trust meter is empty (Figure 1-4).

Dedication

Intent

Capability

Results

Figure 1-4.  Empty trust meter

I will discuss strategies you can use at each stage of the sales cycle to improve your trust meter.

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Chapter 1 | Trust

 “People buy from people.” You have heard that a thousand times. Let me take this a step further, “People buy from people they trust.”

The Value of a Personal Relationship Do not underestimate the value of a personal relationship. I could easily add a “P” section to the trust pie. Some salespeople have that natural ability to forge quick personal relationships with customers.. However, the P section is one small aspect of the relationship, so people skills get you only so far. At the end of the day, the customer has a job and goals to meet. Here is a direct quote from a customer I know, “He is a great guy, but I can only have so many lunches before I feel like I am wasting time. I have a job to do.” As mentioned earlier in this chapter, your customer evaluates trust with everything you do. If you are establishing a personal relationship with a customer, do not compromise the business trust you built with low-character activities, like cheating in golf, drinking too much over dinner, or acting unprofessional, to mention a few. There is no distinction between personal and business character—it is just character.

Example I was working for the industry leader in data storage and trying to break into an account that was held by my competitor. I did most of the right things. I even called high and met with the CIO. I found an issue that my competitor was not in a position to solve. It was a hotly contested sales cycle, and I was competing against a trusted incumbent. The customer needed more performance in their computing systems, and they determined that the type of technology installed from my competitor was not the proper technology. The incumbent did nothing wrong; over time, new computing needs out grew this particular technology. The customer needed to improve performance. In order to do this, they were convinced they needed a certain type of technology, a technology in which my company was the industry leader. We had thousands of customers running this technology in their environments who experienced great improvements to system performance.

Trust-Based Selling My competitor, the incumbent, was just entering the market with this technology, and it was widely known in the industry that they had a ton of bugs. They had one reference customer—themselves. The referral they used was their own internal IT department. We had better technology and references, competitive pricing, and a powerful position within the organization. Slam dunk! On a Monday night, I was eating pizza outdoors at a restaurant, and I get a call from the customer. “Congratulations Dave, we are going with your technology.” Well, dinner became more of a celebration. The next morning, with my head a bit cloudy, I get a call from my new customer, “Dave, can you answer one more question?” I was thinking, “Where is this going? Something is not right.” They had already said I had won, why another question? I answered the technical question to the customer’s satisfaction. That afternoon, I got another call. “Dave, we decided to go with the incumbent.” I had better pricing, technology, references, and so on. Why did I lose? They trusted their incumbent more than me, the new salesperson. Remember that the sales cycle breaks the Qualify/Develop stage into distinct sections. Establish trust then qualify. In my eagerness to win a “slam dunk” sale, I skipped straight to qualifying the technical aspects without first establishing trust. I sold the product first, then the company, and then myself. But any buyer buys in this order: 1. You. Do they trust you to help them with moving their business forward? 2. Company. Is the company stable; will it stand behind what they sell me? 3. Product. The product needs to meet their needs, but they will not consider product until trust is established. In this example, I definitely had company and product advantages, so I have to assume I did not have their trust. I lost that opportunity, but using the strategies in this book, I gained that company as a long-term customer.

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Summary When you know the customer is looking for trust, and you can break down trust into tangible components, you can shift your strategy at each stage of the sales cycle to address each component. Always keep in mind that you must show that your intent is to help. You must continually improve your knowledge and skill to show proper competence. You must follow through on your commitments, large and small, to your customer. And, most important, your customer is looking for results. You must demonstrate you can deliver what you promise before and after the sale. In coming chapters, I will explain how trust evolves through a typical sales cycle. However, first we will lay the foundation of selling 101—the psychological process used by every buyer regardless of the size of the purchase—then how the salesperson must align to the buying process, and finally how most sales processes are broken when it comes to acquiring new accounts. Naturally, I will then demonstrate how you can use trust to overcome poor processes and hone your sales skills.

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2 Identify the Silent Sales Killers You Never Had a Chance Status quo, you know, is Latin for “the mess we’re in.” —Ronald Reagan We are starting with establishing trust from the beginning of the sales relationship, since this is the most difficult scenario in which to succeed. But let’s set aside the idea of trust for the time being and look at the challenges faced by sales reps even before they make first contact the customer. Why are improved sales results so hard to drive? What are the root causes? To improve results, salespeople and management both grab onto tangible ideas like product training, working leads, work ethic, sales process, and sales skills training. But the difficulty of succeeding in sales is often not rooted in the salesperson’s lack of experience or sales skills. There are many seasoned sales professionals who fail to meet their goals. The reasons fall into the category of status quo. There are many variations of the status quo: • Potential customers are already doing business with an incumbent vendor • Customers do not have a big enough issue to make a change

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Chapter 2 | Identify the Silent Sales Killers • Customers’ fear of change and the risks it brings is holding them back • Customers have fallen into the rut of habitual purchasing— the automatic use of an incumbent vendor, without thought • Customers have competing uses for capital—they have more important projects than than the one you are proposing • Customers are not in the market—they buy what you sell only every few years, or longer Let’s look at how each of these items works against developing new business in more depth.

“We Have a Guy for That” Customers have standing relationships in place for almost everything they purchase. Whether they buy that product or service every week or every four years, they have a vendor. You may be a better, more caring, and more competent salesperson than the incumbent. You may work for a better company than the incumbent. And, you might have far better products or services than the incumbent. However, the incumbent salesperson has the most important asset in sales: the trusted business relationship.

Example Here’s an example. A reseller, VarTech, recently entered into a new relationship with a manufacturer, Brand Computer. Brand Computer has one of the largest product portfolios in the world, and they have resellers established in VarTech’s region. As seen in Figure 2-1, the customer base has the option to buy through a value added reseller, or directly from Brand Computer. Being a new reseller competing against incumbent resellers, VarTech needs a strategy for how to ramp with this new manufacturer.

Trust-Based Selling

Figure 2-1.  Path to market

Brand offers endless product training for VarTech’s sales teams and engineers. Marketing programs are developed to introduce this new relationship to VarTech’s customer base. Field sales teams from both companies conduct countless account mapping and territory planning sessions. Yet after six months, the reseller has very little sales traction. Looking for answers, sales management turns to the manufacturer for help. Brand Computer’s answer is, predictably, more product training. Still, results do not improve. A couple of months later, VarTech was able to hire two of Brand’s senior, successful salespeople. These individuals interviewed very well. They passed the personality/sales profile tests. Their references checked out flawlessly. Their product knowledge of Brand Computer products is, naturally, well beyond any VarTech salesperson, since that’s all they had been selling the previous five years. Each of these new hires comes to the company with relationships with several customers. These relationships are at high levels, with the power buyers. That’s reflected in their results—together they sold $30 million worth of products in the previous year. Clearly, these are senior salespeople—experienced, hard-working, and full of product knowledge. This was the answer to VarTech’s problems. The company’s goal is to sell $3 million of the manufacturer’s product in the first year. This goal is only 10% of what these individuals did the year before in their sales roles at Brand Computer. But things didn’t go as planned. In their first year at VarTech, they booked $100,000 in sales—99.7% less than they did the year before.

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Chapter 2 | Identify the Silent Sales Killers Here are two experienced, hardworking salespeople with track records of success. They had full support from the company. They had no trouble getting their feet in the door with their old customers. Sales managers went on high-level calls with them to most of their old customers. So, what was the problem? Why such horrific sales results which, incidentally, resulted in their terminations within 12 months? To understand what went wrong, we must analyze their previous year of success. What made them successful during their tenure at Brand Computer? What was the sales model? They did 100% of their business through resellers. Let me repeat that. They did 100% of their business through a reseller like VarTech. These salespeople thus had more of a “how is everything going” type of relationship with the customer. The resellers, on the other hand, owned the valued business relationships with the customers. How do you think the calls went with their old customers now that they worked for VarTech, a competitor for many of them? Let’s analyze the initial conversation one had with an old customer. When asked by the customer, “Tell me about your new company,” one of the new salespeople, Susan, and her sales manager spent 30 minutes with the customer reviewing the capabilities of their company. At the end of the appointment, the customer was at least honest with the new rep, “Susan, thank you for the overview of your new company. Sounds like there is a lot you can offer, and we value the relationship we have had with you. Thank you for the hard work you have done over the years. However, as you know, I also have a relationship with Jim at VPH (another reseller of Brand Computer). I can’t just move my business to your new company. He has also been a great asset to our company, a trusted advisor. He probably has to screw up pretty big for us to change. They process our orders the way we like, our credit line is established, they are a preferred vendor in our system, and they have great engineering support.” In other words, “We have a guy for that.” The situation gets worse. The rep says, “We definitely understand that. I also liked working with Jim. So, what can we do to earn your business?” Two things here: She did not throw Jim under the bus. That’s good. But she gave up all her power. That’s bad. The customer says, “Well as business comes up I can give you a chance to quote.” Susan replies with a smile, “Thank you. All we ask for is a chance.”

Trust-Based Selling Susan and the sales manager leave the call happy. The door is open! The customer is giving them a chance. The sad fact is that Susan and the manager think the only chance they have against Jim is to win on price, since he is giving them a chance to quote. Does this turn out as they hope? They get a chance, actually several, over the course of the year. However, Susan’s replacement at Brand Computer is working with Jim, the incumbent. In the IT industry, the first company to register the deal with the manufacturer enjoys a significant cost advantage over competing resellers, making it nearly impossible for VarTech to use lower pricing as a strategy. So, Susan never has a chance to win on price, which in itself is a bad way to earn business. Why? Let’s say this “get a chance” strategy had worked. They get to quote on a project. The sales manager wants this customer, so they take the business at very low prices. With this strategy, they become the low-cost provider, a weak vendor, and not a partner. Winning on price just gives up your personal value to the customer. But Susan never got even this far, and she was out of a job within a year. Later, I will outline the strategies Susan should have used to compete against the incumbent.

Habitual Purchasing Habitual purchasing is a sales “relationship” in its lowest form: “We just buy all that stuff through Larry.” Customers who have high transaction rates will often fall into this category. They have a preferred vendor, the order process is routine, and pricing seems fair. They might even have certain items show up month after month. They might not have seen the salesperson in months. But, nonetheless, “We buy our stuff from Larry.”

Example Let’s say a new salesperson, Sara, is trying to sell dental supplies to a busy dentist. She visits his office every week, in the hope she can actually catch the dentist to talk to him. This dentist had a relationship with a salesperson, Ben. Ben was a relationship guy. He won over the dentist when the dentist was just starting out. For 10 years, the dentist bought all his dental supplies from Ben’s company. Ben retired two years ago, and Chris replaced him. Chris barely steps foot in the dentist’s office. Chris is young, and he has nothing in common with this dentist. Nonetheless, the dentist keeps ordering from Chris’s company.

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Chapter 2 | Identify the Silent Sales Killers Over the years, the dentist has had to deal with so many different salespeople, he got to the point he does not even take calls or appointments from anyone new. His automatic response, and his defense against new salespeople is, “I buy my stuff from Ben’s, or that new kid’s, company.” He probably repeats this so many times that he almost believes he is not allowed to go anywhere else. This is habitual purchasing. The dentist has a “relationship,” but it is more out of habit. He does not have to think about it. At the end of the month they tally up their inventory and just send an order over. The dentist even says, “What I like about this new kid is that he does not try to sell me.” He views new salespeople as just trying to sell him something. He views the kid who he doesn’t know as his preferred supplier, “Because he understands I just want to order and not be sold.” In reality, Chris does not understand anything about this dentist. he has tried to meet with him often, and the dentist rebuffs her, saying, “We are good. We use you; no need to come in.” Chris eventually will just stop calling. So, the new person, Sara, coming in has practically no chance. What can she do to talk to this dentist? I will share the strategies she uses to eventually win this dentist’s business later in the book. Don’t give up on customers in “habitual purchase” mode. They meet the best quality of any customer—they are purchasing. Eventually they will understand that salespeople can help them do more business or save money.

Not in the Market In most B2B sales, buying cycles are lengthy. I will define buying cycles in detail later, but here is a simple definition for this chapter—it’s the period of time between customer purchases. Do they buy what you sell every week, every year, every four years, 10 years, or 20 years? Your only chance of beating an incumbent vendor is to beat them to the punch. You need perfect timing to engage the customer when they decide they need to buy and before they call the incumbent. This window of opportunity is very small. If they purchase—or consider a vendor change—every four years, this window of opportunity is maybe two months prior to the customer seriously considering the solution. That is a probability of 4.2% to engage the customer at just the right time. I will explore this at length in Chapter 6, Build Business Relationships.

Trust-Based Selling Most sales processes have you believe that if you can create enough pain, or expand on an issue the customer has, they will suddenly be in the market. This is not the answer. What if the customer just purchased? What if there really is no issue? What is your strategy at that point? Customers live with pain all the time. While pain must be present for the customer to make a purchase, you cannot always manufacture pain for the customer. Plus, customers often live with pain for various reasons.

Example The best way to demonstrate customers living with pain is through an example we can all relate to on a personal level. On a day-to-day basis, you live in a house. Typically, you buy what you can afford at the time. Over the course of the years, you start to make more money. You have your first kid. You start to accumulate more stuff, and the house starts to feel too small. Every day, you drive past a new neighborhood that is closer to work and where the homes are larger and nicer than the home you live in. You would love to move, and you now make enough money to afford a new home in this neighborhood. Even your ego is kicking in; your internal voice is saying, “Move up, you deserve it.” You drive up to your existing home and see all the work you have put into the yard, you walk into the living room where you have laid the hardwood floor yourself. You see where your child took their first steps. The next morning it’s Friday, but you are stuck in traffic and late for work, and you are sitting in front of that new neighborhood, “Wow, it would be nice to have saved 15 minutes on my commute. I would be past this traffic by now.” Then you start to seriously consider a move. As traffic eases up, you think about the effort it would take to move. You have to list your house, which means finding an agent. You will have to keep your house immaculate for the next three months. On the other side, you might have to deal with builders in the new neighborhood, and timing the sale of your current house with having the new house be move-in ready. The hassle of the physical move itself is a huge consideration. The new home will be bigger, which means you will need new furniture. You just finished hanging blinds in every window of the old house after five years. You will have to landscape and hang blinds in this new house. The list continues in your mind. On the way home you start to wonder what your weekend plans should be, but you have nothing planned. You start to think, “The weather is great. You know what, I think I am going to go look for a new boat this weekend.” Thoughts of a new house have evaporated . . . for now.

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Chapter 2 | Identify the Silent Sales Killers This example points out several reasons why customers live with pain. 1. They are emotionally tied to a solution they presently have. In a business setting, they made a significant purchasing decision at some point. They may have tweaked the solution over the years. They are comfortable with their solution. They know the ins and outs of their current solution. 2. The thought of change, or of the unknown, is too overwhelming. The act of change will not be easy. They fear the learning curve of a new solution. 3. They have other uses for their money. They have more urgent projects. In this example, you hate the commute and really want a new house that is bigger and in a better location. You know you have a long commute. You know you keep tripping on toys in your small home. But, you are not willing to change for a variety of reasons. Even if a real estate agent came in and starting selling features and benefits of the new home and neighborhood, you are still not ready to make the emotional decision to move. It is just easier to do nothing. Understand that in many cases it is easier to do nothing than to entertain the idea of buying what you are selling. Even if your solution is superior, the thought of changing is too daunting for many. But there are ways to get people to look to you first when they do decide to buy.

More on the Status Quo What I just described with the sections “Not in the Market, “We Have a Guy for That,” and “Habitual Purchasing” is status quo. Status quo is also known as making no decision. It’s the act of keeping the same solution, or doing business as usual. So even if you can convince the customer there is a need, how do you beat the incumbent? How do these challenges present themselves? How do you know when the customer is not in the market or if you are in a competitive environment? The customer will not always be direct. And here is the interesting part—in status quo, regardless of which category the buyer falls in, she will present the same way, usually with silence.

Trust-Based Selling The most frustrating part of being a salesperson is that prospects don’t bother to call you back, return your voice messages, or acknowledge your e-mails. After all, they not only have a guy for that, but they have 10 other salespeople waiting in line to provide that service or product. It’s frustrating. You make 50 cold calls a day. You attend networking events. You join lead-sharing groups. You do your education on the customer. You have the greatest new product on the market. But, your customer does not acknowledge any of this. You are just another person, and they hit delete before the voicemail system has a chance to play the message through to your name. We have all been customers, and we know what customers face. Think about it, how many voicemails do you get a day, how many e-mails? Think about the inbox of your personal e-mail account. How many spam e-mails do you get? When you don’t recognize the name, do you bother to read the e-mail? When a telemarketer calls you, don’t you want to hang up as quickly as ­possible? Business customers are people with busy lives. They do not feel any different. Throughout the book, I discuss tactics and methods to get past the silence and gain access to prospects.

Understand the Opportunity Trap The “opportunity trap” is how you learn about the power of the status quo. Thanks to your efforts, you engage a customer with an opportunity. They seem to want your input and bid. But they have no intention of awarding you the deal. You can identify you are falling into this trap over and over again because you have a large pipeline but never seem to close anything. Most managers will come to believe that you have a problem with closing business. With any customer, if you go straight after opportunity, your relationship is not nearly strong enough to unseat other vendors with more established relationships. You probably are losing most of your deals to “the guy we have for that.” The difference is now you have skin in the game. You now see the opportunity, spend time on the opportunity, forecast the opportunity, and usually lose the deal. The problem is that customers need to look at more than one solution, or proposal, whenever there is a large purchase. They need to do this either because of policy, where they require three proposals, or because they are looking to negotiate against their chosen vendor. The other vendors they use for comparison are called “column fodder.” Let’s take an example that has nothing to do with sales, but will drive home the point: American Idol. If you have been living under a rock for the last 10 years, or this book is still in print 50 years from now, and you have not heard of it,

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Chapter 2 | Identify the Silent Sales Killers American Idol is a singing contest television show. Each season, they start with literally thousands of contestants, and, through a series of eliminations, they crown one winner. Here is how the process works. Before the season starts, they go to eight or nine cities. They advertise for contestants and fill up a football stadium in each city with the hopefuls. Each meets with a producer of the show, to see if they can get a chance to perform for the celebrity judges, with a potential to get on TV in the early rounds. The celebrity judges then select maybe 200 contestants to advance in the competition. The 200 contestants over the course of a week get whittled down to 15 contestants who make the live shows. Then, viewers vote on their favorite singer, and the one with the least number of votes gets eliminated each week until there is a one winner. In the very first elimination event, the producers screen thousands of hopefuls to put in front of the celebrity judges. The four types that make it to television are: 1. The great singers. 2. The singers that the producers need a second opinion about. They may have a unique quality or voice. 3. The “fun” people who do crazy things that will be fun to watch. They have no chance to win, and they know it. They are just happy to get on television. 4. The people who think they are good but are just awful. These people make for the best television because they can’t believe they are not good, and they go insane when they are eliminated from consideration. How does this relate to sales? In sales you have a champion, a primary point of contact at the customer who guides you through the sales cycle. The champion is analogous to the producer. As with the producers, the champions have a mission, one that is in the best interest of the show or the company. Who does the champion advance in the sales cycle? 1. The incumbent, “the guy,” the great singer. 2. The hopeful, “the new guy they like.” The second option singer. 3. The vendors they are going use to beat up on price to keep the first two companies honest. But, unlike the category 3 singers on American Idol, you still might have a chance at this stage. Later, you’ll learn different strategies. Or, if they stick you in this category and you know it, you can minimize wasting your sales time by bowing out early.

Trust-Based Selling 4. This is the worst position as a salesperson. You think you have a great opportunity. And, you work it to the bitter end. You forecast it. You waste your time and company resources. However, you never had a chance in the first place. This is column fodder. Where would you rather lose a deal—before the producers, or before the 20 million TV viewers? Would you rather qualify the deal out early or waste time—hours, weeks, or months—holding on to hope? On the show, the singers with little talent who are told by the producers they are good are devastated when they learn the truth from the celebrity judges. Salespeople in this category are frustrated and confused, because all along their ­“champion” was telling them they were winning the deal. I will help you identify if you are number 1, 2, 3, or 4 in the process. This will help you understand why you lose so many deals in the first year, and it will help you avoid wasting that precious time. I will also help you identify if opportunities you uncover are worth working, or reporting in your forecast. But most importantly, I will discuss how to take advantage of opportunities that you do have a chance to win. Avoiding the opportunity trap is not an easy problem to overcome. You will be pressured to build a pipeline. If you are not at quota, you will have personal and managerial pressure to work these deals hard to the bitter end. Along the way, you may feel your only chance to start doing business with a customer is through aggressive pricing. This is a mistake. It will only hurt your long-term relationship.

How Buyers View You Beware of opportunities early in your relationship with potential customers. I have used the American Idol example to loosely define column fodder. An educated buyer will look at more than one vendor to compare and negotiate pricing. Professional buyers are taught to engage with three or four vendors with each deal. Let’s label the vendors as A, B, C, and D. A is the vendor that the customer wants, the customer who has the trusted relationship. Determining if you are this vendor should not be difficult.Vendor A can be the incumbent, or the vendor that helped the customer discover a need and establish the purchasing criteria. This is the vendor that probably spent the most time with the customer. Vendor A will get access to the true decision-makers. The customer can live with Vendor B, if they do not get the pricing or terms they believe are fair from A. You can identify yourself as B if you are not the incumbent but helped identify a need for the customer. You have a unique

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Chapter 2 | Identify the Silent Sales Killers solution that offers greater value than A. The customer has spent a considerable amount of time with you.Vendor B has controlled access to power. Vendors C and D for the most part are there to help negotiate the pricing of Vendors B and A. The customer spends very little time with these vendors. These vendors are late to the game and are given the requirements of the project, but they have no influence over the criteria. A lot of times, Vendors C and D will receive a call asking for pricing. Or, on the first few visits to the customer, the customer may say, “Great timing. Yes, we have something we need. Here are the criteria. Can you get us pricing?” If you are answering an RFP that you had no input on, you must consider yourself Vendor C or D. If you didn’t help shape the RFP you are bidding on, understand that you are most likely a third- or fourth-tier vendor and have your work cut out for you. Or you have no chance of winning the sale no matter what you do.

Most sales processes teach that one of the criteria you must have to win a deal is a champion. This is an individual at the customer site who guides you through the process, sharing information like decision criteria, who the players are, who the competition is, and so on. Educated customers are taught to assign a champion to all the vendors in the running, even the ones they have no intention of purchasing from. Keep in the back of your mind the questions, “Did we earn this level of support from the customer?” If the answer is no, you most likely are Vendor C or D. Here is the basic strategy of the multivendor approach, which is taught to most buyers. Each vendor is assigned a champion. The champion helps the vendor understand the requirements of the project. Champions for Vendors C and D will make them think they are winning, but they need better pricing. The customer will keep Vendors A and B insecure, never giving them the feeling they are winning. Vendor D thinks all they need to do is provide better pricing, so they do. The customer takes that pricing and negotiates with Vendor C for better pricing. With a good price in hand, the customer now approaches Vendor B who, remember, has been kept insecure, and asks them for even deeper pricing than Vendor C. Now they have a strong price, a solution, and a vendor they can live with,Vendor B. They will say to Vendor A, “We have a vendor we like. You are now in the lead, but you need to match or come close to Vendor B’s offer.”

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Trust-Based Selling

Figure 2-2.  Column fodder

The trap is, if you are Vendor C or D, you have been engaged on this opportunity by the customer very early in the relationship. You have not built trust. You must question why they would trust you with such a large project. Have they investigated your capabilities? Probably not, which is a telling sign. That’s why you do not want to spend a lot of time on these opportunities early in the relationship. In short: 1. You will be forced to use lower pricing. This will pigeonhole you as the low-cost vendor. 2. You will get out of alignment with your customer if you think you are losing. You try too hard. 3. The deal becomes about your quota and not their project. Your perceived intentions with this customer can be forever damaged. 4. You can waste a ton of time on these deals and you can spend your time better establishing relationships with customers who might actually buy from you. The opportunity trap becomes a vicious cycle that is hard to get out of. You end up wasting time on opportunities that you do not have a chance to close. So, your pipeline is weak, and you look for more opportunities that have little chance to close. This lack of strategy will put your job in jeopardy. It is the same strategy as the hunter grabbing a gun, walking into the woods,

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Chapter 2 | Identify the Silent Sales Killers and chasing deer. The deer will just run away when they hear the hunter. The hunter is much better off understanding the land, studying the movement patterns of the deer, setting up his deer stand a good location, and allowing the prey to come to him.

These Leads Suck You have a great marketing department. You get three to four leads a week, or a day, depending on your industry. You seem to be working harder than anyone, not passing up any lead, and working them until they close or die. The issue is that these leads are opportunity-focused. Say you get a lead from marketing. It has all the details. • Contact name • Contact number • Contact e-mail • Brief description of interest • Date for an appointment • Expected purchase timeframe You go into your Customer Resource Management (CRM) system and accept the lead. Next, you call the customer to confirm the call. Approximately 50% of the time, the customers will say they need to reschedule, and to please call back in a couple of weeks. But this time, the customer confirms. You are excited that you have an appointment, a “real” lead. You drive to the customer and start, “So you are interested in X.” The customer is confused and says, “That’s not what I told the person on the phone. I told them maybe next year.” So, you start to back-pedal a bit and begin to qualify the customer. The customer seems a bit guarded and does not share that much information. You go back to the office, sign into the CRM system, and update the status of the lead as dead. But, you put in a callback reminder six months out. What went wrong? Why was the lead information wrong? What could you have done differently? Your manager will track success with leads. Do you follow through with them? What close rate do you have? Marketing will want to cost-justify their lead programs and will also track the success of the leads passed to the field. Not being near your sales goals, leads become a crutch. You work every lead to the end. That’s what your gut instinct says to do, and your manager keeps saying, “Success will come; keep working your leads.”

Trust-Based Selling Leads are a great tool, but only if you use them correctly. Leads are not the opportunity—leads are a foot in the door. Concentrating on the details of the lead will focus you specifically on opportunity, which means you’ll fall into the same dilemma as before: they have a guy for that. They engage you on deals you have no chance to close, or you don’t run into a dead end talking about a specific opportunity. If you start to qualify the customer, you leave the door open.

Example A company’s finance department is having a review with the president. The CFO brings to the president’s attention that an incumbent software provider is delivering less-than-acceptable support. The discussion becomes whether or not the vendor can be replaced. The CFO says that they are pretty much locked into the incumbent solution. Even though they do not like this vendor, it would be too costly and cumbersome to change the technology. So, what do they do to get better service from this vendor? The president says, “We need to find a competing technology. Our current vendor needs to think this is a real threat. The new vendor needs to think they are winning, so we can get a great proposal we can leverage against our current vendor.” They engage a new vendor with all intentions of deceiving it. They are going to give some salesperson hope, but no chance. Would they do this to a vendor who has been working for their business? No, they actively seek out a “stranger.” This is not an isolated case. I know of a major customer who has a strong relationship with a vendor. They need to refresh the equipment every four years. Every four years they find a competitor who is willing to “compete” for the business. Every four years, they take the competing proposal and negotiate price with the incumbent, and the incumbent wins. This customer has done this over the last 20 years, so most people in the industry know that working this deal is a waste of time. But, every four years, they find a hopeful, with “happy ears,” who is willing to take the bait—even when partners and other people in the industry are telling the salesperson they have no chance. This new salesperson wastes months of work on a losing effort.

Example You do the same thing as a consumer. You are buying a car and go to your nearest dealership. You negotiate what you think is a good price, but you head home to think about it. You want the car, but you want to make sure you are getting a good deal. When you get home, you call a dealer that is two hours away and you say, “I am looking to buy a car. I would be willing to drive the two hours if you give a great price.”

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Chapter 2 | Identify the Silent Sales Killers The salesperson on the other end of the phone says, “Let me see what I can do.” He goes to his manager and says he has a customer willing to drive down if they can give him a good price. He is engaged in the sales cycle, getting management involved, and so on. He calls the customer back and says, “Yes, we can meet the price you are looking for.” The price is very similar to the local dealer’s price. You got the information you needed, “Thank you, let me think about it.” The price from the original dealer is fair so now you know you got a good deal. Even if it was not fair, you most likely will take that price and try to negotiate with the local dealer. You never had any intention of driving two hours to buy from the other dealer, yet you engaged them with the carrot of a sale. You intentionally wasted a salesperson’s time. It happens all the time!

Summary This chapter outlined the major challenges you face when trying to win business with a new customer. The number one issue is that they are unwilling to change the current solution or current vendor. I will explore each of these challenges in more detail and discuss the strategies you need to first gain access, then win the trust of the customer, then focus on opportunity, and finally close the deal. You need to think outside the opportunity. However, that is where I will start, with the basics of an opportunity. The best place to start learning about opporunity is to understand the process your customers follow when making purchasing decisions. I will cover that process in the next chapter.

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3 The Buyer Process Laying the Foundation Don’t reinvent the wheel, just realign it. —Anthony J. D’Angelo You need to lay a foundation on which to build the trust-based strategies needed to win new customers. The first place to start is to understand the process the buyers follow with every purchase, small or big. This is a naturally occurring series of stages; the goal is to define each of the stages to give you common ground to build upon.

The Buying Cycle Books regarding selling and buying cycles fill the shelves of stores. They go into much more detail. There are many different sales processes companies use, and most likely your company has a process in place. My model is a simplified version that encompasses the main concepts of most processes (Figure  3-1). The core buying processes are the Needs Analysis, Evaluate, and Purchase phases. In total, this model defines the entire vendorcustomer relationship cycle.

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Chapter 3 | The Buyer Process

Figure 3-1.  Buying process

This process applies to every purchase a customer makes, from consumerbased purchases to multi-million dollar business-to-business purchases. Let’s look at each of the steps in order.

Status Quo Customers are conducting business as usual. They have their preferred vendors, and they may be evaluating purchases today. They are influenced by industry trends. They are constantly being asked to drive cost down. In some cases, depending on which department is the target of your sales efforts, they may be asked to increase revenues. Today, the customer is living with issues. They may not be aware of the issues they have. They may have inefficiencies that they may not be aware of. Customers always want to simplify their lives, so a lot of times they have vendor-reduction programs underway. They have 30 other people just like you calling them daily. At a certain point, a compelling event— called a trigger—will occur that will cause them to move to the next step.

Needs Analysis An event has happened, or a business need arises that influences a particular department. The customer is now tasked with understanding the issue. Depending on the complexity of the issue, customers will look for external help to define their needs further and start exploring options to solve their issue. Once they feel they have a solution, or even multiple solutions, they proceed to the next phase.

Trust-Based Selling

Evaluation Customers look at each option. They ensure the solution works to the specifications the vendor has promised. Once they settle on the most helpful solution, they move to the purchase phase.

Purchase The purchase phase for the customer involves budget approval, if not already done; negotiations with the vendor(s), contracts, terms, and conditions; and purchase orders. Most buyer and sales cycles stop after the close, since they are typically focused on the sale. I want to discuss two more steps that truly complete the buyer/seller relationship. These steps are important in the process of understanding your main competitor, the incumbent. I will discuss later how the stages impact trust and how they create an unfair playing field that you must be aware of.

Implement Buyers will implement the solution or utilize the product they purchased. The buyer can implement the solution by themselves or with help from the seller. The buyer is evaluating the ease of implementation. Are there any surprises? Challenges? Did the seller stay past the close of the sale? Was implementation easy or hard?

Measure Does the solution live up to the buyer’s expectations? This step is often neglected by both buyer and seller. In most B2B sales, an ROI is presented. Does the solution in fact meet the ROI objectives? This is one of the most important steps in maintaining customers, and lead to easier referrals; both internal to the customer and external. The final two steps in the sales cycle—implementing and measuring—are areas that most salespeople neglect. If you want to be a superior salesperson, pay attention to these final steps in all sales. The good news is that the typical incumbent’s lack of focus in these stages is a weakness you can exploit. Again, I will discuss this in further detail later in the book.

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The Buyer’s Four Concerns Concentrating back on the main purchase phases—Need Analysis, Evaluate, Purchase—the buyer balances four psychological concerns. These concerns are need, cost, solution, and risk. As Figure  3-2 shows, the relative level of concern for each of these shifts throughout the buying process.

Figure 3-2.  Shifting buyer concerns

When buyers first enter into the buying cycle, the primary concern is need, followed by cost, solution, and risk. When you enter into a decision to purchase, you know you need something, and you know about how much you can afford, or how much a solution might cost. Today this has never been more true with pricing information on the internet. In the first phase, buyers start off not as concerned with the solution. As buyers progress through this stage, they evaluate their needs in more detail and start to get a better sense of what they are looking for—the solution. Notice that cost concerns start going down. Risk starts to rise since the buyer is spending more time on this purchase—the risk of lost time. In the evaluation stage, customers are focused on the solution; they may testdrive a car, look at a house, try ice cream flavors, demo your solution, or conduct a formal evaluation. During this phase, buyers stop focusing on the need, and start focusing on the features and functions. Cost concerns are very low. Risk continues to rise as they invest more time in the process. In the purchase phase, the focus moves to risk. Buyers are concerned about whether they are making the right decision. Do they sign on the bottom line? What if they make a mistake? In a business setting, this can affect a person’s

Trust-Based Selling career if the purchase is large. The concern with cost rises in this stage, but notice that cost is never top of mind in any stage. It is also important to note that need and solution are nearly out of mind in the final stage.

Example This example illustrates the activities and concerns as they shift throughout the buying cycle. It revisits the house scenario discussed in Chapter 2. In status quo, everyday living, you have been thinking about moving. But you decide you can live with the pain of the commute, and you are okay with the smaller house. The thought of the cost and chore of moving has you cringing. You get home Friday after work, and walk into the kitchen to talk to your wife about your idea of buying a boat. Before you open your mouth, your wife, smiling, says, “Guess what?” “What?” “We are going to have another baby!!” Being smart, you tuck the bass boat idea away. “Wow that’s awesome honey.” After some hugs and kisses, you say, “You know, we need to buy a new house.” You just had a compelling event, a trigger. There is no way your current house will provide enough room for two kids. Most likely, you do not have real estate agents cold calling you, but over the years you have made friends with one or two, and you call the one you feel will help you find the home you need, someone who knows the market.

Needs Analysis As far as the seller is concerned, this is when the buyer enters the market and into needs analysis. Assume that you are sitting down with the agent for the first time to go through your needs. In the early part of the sales cycle, your needs are loosely defined: you know about where you need to look, how much you are willing to spend, and you probably have an idea of the number of bedrooms. When you meet with the agent, she will start to define your needs in more detail, probably by asking a series of questions. How old are your kids? Are you looking for a sidewalk neighborhood, or more in the country? How long of a commute are you willing to tolerate? Does the age of the home matter? Would you like new construction? Number of bathrooms? How much land are you looking for? Do you care which school district? And, so on.

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Chapter 3 | The Buyer Process Just as in the buyer concern graph, you come in with some needs, and then start to more clearly define them. During that process, the buyer is also starting to form a better idea of what they are looking for, or the solution. While defining the needs, cost is not discussed past the initial range you give the agent. At this point you are just developing a wish list.

Evaluation Now that the agent has a good idea of what you are looking for, she will go online and do a quick search of homes for sale that meet your criteria. Now starts the evaluation period. You sort through all the listings and, based on gut, pictures, pricing, narrow down the list to 5–10 houses to evaluate. You and the agent spend the next week, or longer, touring houses. You look carefully at every house to see if it meets your criteria, while looking for good and bad features. Look again at the buyer concerns. The buyer’s original needs, or criteria, are becoming less of a concern since most of the houses should have the basics. But, you now are looking at the condition of the house, the wow of the kitchen, the smell of pets. You are more concerned with the bells and whistles of the solution. Cost goes out the window. “What an amazing view of the lake,” you might say, even though the price of this option may be completely beyond your original price range. The evaluation stage closes with choosing a house, and having an inspector make sure that everything is up to code.

Purchase The purchase stage starts with making an offer. Concerns and emotions can run high at this point. Risk is the highest concern; you just spent two weeks running all over looking at one house after another, and you and your wife “fell in love” with one. Concerns with solution and need are both at an all-time low. Now it’s about the risk and the price. Price is not the main factor in closing. Rarely do homebuyers go for the lowest-price house they look at. Risk is two-fold in the last stage—the risk of not getting what you need and the risk of signing. Now it’s time to sign the mortgage papers. You and your wife sit in the lawyer’s office signing 40 different documents. You have seen the numbers for the last two weeks, but now is the time to sign, and that’s when risk is a huge concern.

Trust-Based Selling

Exercise It would be a great exercise for you to imagine any purchase you have made over the last week, and think through the entire buyer process. For example, you are driving around with the family on a hot day. The kids are getting antsy, so you decide to stop for some ice cream. You just went from status quo to needs analysis. You go through each step by evaluating (sampling), purchasing, implementing, and measuring results (tasting). Will you get this flavor again, or use this ice cream shop again? Every purchase goes through the process and different levels of buyer concern. The magnitude of the purchase determines the effort spent on each phase, and the range of buyer emotions you will experience. Think through going to a restaurant, buying a car, or purchasing a vacation.

Summary Customers go through each stage of the buying process with every purchase. In some cases, parts of the process are condensed or simplified. You will learn that customers might make the process easier for some vendors and harder for others, depending on the level of trust they have with each. In the next chapter, you will see that sales cycles are nothing more than aligning with the buyer cycles.

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CHAPTER

4 The Sales Process Align with the Buyer Sales is like a dance; you and the customer take the same steps. The successful salesperson is not afraid to take the lead, or step on a few toes. —Dave Monty To start to define the sales process, let’s start with the end in mind. Ultimately, you want the customers to use and gain value from what you sell them. However, you must win the sale the sale first. So what do you need to win a deal? • Pain. Every sales process revolves around the concept of pain. Without pain, or need, there is no order. Throughout my career, I have learned that a compelling event is more important than mere pain. A compelling event is pain with a time element. This is the best type of pain because it makes predicting and closing business easier. “Compelling event” means the customer has a deadline. Without a deadline, opportunities will drag indefinitely, which can be a huge drain on the sales rep’s time. • Solution. The customer needs to envision that your offering will solve the pain, or fill the need. The customer needs to see value. There has to be a return on investment (ROI). What they spend must either increase revenue or reduce cost greater than the investment.

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Chapter 4 | The Sales Process • Authority. You need a “yes” from someone within the organization who has authority to purchase (otherwise known as power). • Understanding. You need to identify and understand the purchasing decision process. • Relationship. You must have a trusted, valued business relationship with the customer. So how do you bring the customer from need/pain to purchase? Better yet, what does the customer need to identify their need and decide to make a purchase? The buyer follows a psychological process called the buying process (defined in the last chapter). The sales process simply needs to align with that process.

The Sales Cycle As with the buyer cycle, the sales cycle can have many more stages. Again, I will stick with a basic sales process in order to build deeper concepts. Figure 4-1 shows the process and how it correlates with the buying cycle. When working new territories or breaking into new accounts, your focus will be mainly on the first two stages of this process—Plan and Qualify.

Figure 4-1. The sales process involves defining the buying stages from the sales perspective

Let’s look at each step in turn.

Trust-Based Selling

Plan Sellers must plan how they will develop their customers and territories. You must align with your customers even before you meet or reach out to them. You need to learn everything there is to know about your industry, and begin the process to learn about your customer. This knowledge can be found online, from company annual reports, from partners in your industry, and through ongoing interactions with the customer. Based on vertical markets, you can also make assumptions on customer needs. Planning also involves strategizing where to spend your time wisely.

Qualify Understand the customer’s needs. With most models, the emphasis is on qualifying the opportunity. Does it meet  all the criteria for an order to be placed? Is there pain, a decision process, a yes from power, and a good solution? You guide the conversation slowly toward your solution based on initial customer needs. You expand the needs to fit the solution. Paint a vision for the customer for how your solution can help them solve their problem or issue. Understand the evaluation process. This model will shift the emphasis from qualifying the opportunity to qualifying the customer. In the traditional model, the main question you need to answer in this stage is, “Is the opportunity worth spending time on?” In this model, the question becomes, “Is the customer worth my time regardless of an immediate, qualified opportunity?” At this point, I am laying the foundation of the sales cycle. I will spend chapters on this shift in focus. In either model, this stage is the most important, as this is where a solid foundation of trust is built.

Prove This stage is all about understanding the decision criteria your customer is using to make a decision. It’s also about providing a demo of your product, as well as your service capabilities. Give customers the product to evaluate in their setting.

Close Closing is, in the context of this sales process, the act of taking an order. Closing sales is an art that is present at every stage of the sale. The act of closing, if you have qualified right, and have proved your solution meets their business requirements, should be the simple acts of negotiating, working out the terms of contracts, and completing purchase orders.

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Implement Implementation is simply the customer using your service or product. Depending on your offering, this can be a simple process or take years. The buyer or the seller may be responsible for the implementation. However, it is important for the seller to stay engaged at this stage to ensure it runs smoothly for the customer.

Measure Measure the results after implementation. As mentioned earlier, this stage is often neglected. For a salesperson, this can be the most powerful stage. This stage takes work and diligence and may require input or work from the customer. It is important that the buyer is shown by the seller that the value that was presented in the earlier stages is true. Notice that these last two stages are actually named the same in the buyer and seller processes. Up through the Close/Purchase stage, the buyer and seller may work closely together, but the agenda of each is different. There are still issues of pricing, terms and conditions, competition, and so on. After the purchase, the customer and the seller are partnered in solving the problem. Your focus in the early stages of developing a territory should be on the customer and not on the opportunity. Figure 4-1’s steps are simple to help you stay focused on your goal, which is a sale.

Example Let’s continue the real estate example from before, focusing here on the seller’s experience during the sale of a home. The sales agent needs to align with the buyer right from the beginning. Let’s say a real estate agent meets a potential new homebuyer at a party. Eventually the homebuyer asks, “What do you do?” She says, “I am a real estate agent.” “We have been thinking of moving, but we are not ready right now.” The agent asks, “Why are you thinking of moving?” “Well, I am not very happy with my commute and our house is getting too small,” says the buyer.

Trust-Based Selling The agent makes a mental note. I need to keep in touch with this client; he is close to moving. He is not ready to move, but he is one compelling event away from moving. So she does the smart thing and stays in touch with this new buyer. In six months she gets a call. The buyers are expecting a new baby. The compelling event she had been waiting for occurs. She gets the listing on the old home, and now she turns her attention to looking for a new home. Here, the buyer relays the basics of what they are looking for—the number of bedrooms, cost range, town, and so on. For any salesperson, this is the most important stage of the sale. It’s in this stage that you show your knowledge, and how much you care about the customer. When qualifying a customer or opportunity, the more you know, the better and easier the sale and evaluation stage. For the real estate agent, effective questions include, “Why are you moving? When are you looking to move? Is your current house already on the market? Have you secured financing? How old are your kids; does school district matter; are you looking for a neighborhood with amenities? Where do you work; how long of a commute is ideal?” The goal here is not to teach you to be a real estate agent, but to give you a sense how the right questions show that you know your business, and that you care about the customer. On the opposite side of the coin, imagine the agent skips the step of further qualifying the needs, and says, “I have the perfect house for you.” The agent can’t ignore the most important concern, real need, and jumps straight to the solution. I know I would feel uneasy, and that jumping straight to looking at houses would seem like a waste of time. Unfortunately, this is exactly the mistake 80% of salespeople make—they jump to product discussions well before needs have been analyzed in detail. During the evaluation stage, the agent needs to show the houses. During this phase, the buyer can become overwhelmed with the options. What happens to cost concerns of the buying in this stage? This concern goes way down. It’s at this time that agents will stretch the buyer’s budget. Since concern with cost at this point is so low, this tactic goes largely unnoticed. She knows the buyer might pay for a lake view, even though it was not one of the original needs. The agent is taking advantage of the buyer concern cycle. I use this example to illustrate the point that cost is of little concern. In business-tobusiness sales, your repeat business is more important than the first sale. So, your concern should be for the best interests of your prospect’s business, not the size of your commission check. Now comes the time for the buyer to make that big decision and purchase. The biggest concern is risk. The buyer is about to commit a great percentage of his paycheck for the next 30 years. A good agent in this case remembers

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Chapter 4 | The Sales Process the sales cycle, and keeps reminding the buyer of the needs and solution. “You are going to look great cooking out on that gorgeous back deck. Wow, what a great location, only five minutes from work. Now you don’t have to worry about finding a hotel in between homes.”

Exercise As you did at the end of the last chapter, think through a purchase you have made recently that involved a salesperson. How did the salesperson do? Did she align with you in the buyer process? How did you feel if the person was completely aligned, or how did you feel if she was not aligned? The degree to which you evaluate needs and the solution usually correlates to the size of the purchase. You drop your mobile phone and break it. You walk into the mobile company’s storefront. The salesperson asks what you what brought you in. Does this person instantly start showing you phones, or do they get to know what you use your phone for? Do they take the time to understand your needs? Do they help you narrow down your choices? Do they allow you to try the phone? After you place the order, does the salesperson help you learn the new features of the phone? Most salespeople don’t do this, but did you get a call a few weeks a later asking if your purchase is meeting your needs? Think through other scenarios you encounter on a daily basis. Take eating at a restaurant, where a good waiter is a good salesperson. Or, think through the last car you purchased. Did the seller align with you at each stage: Status Quo, Event, Needs Analysis, Evaluation, Purchase, Implement, and Measure? If not, how did you feel?

Summary The sales process mimics the natural steps each buyer takes when buying anything. Trust, of course, is woven into the process. Trust and the sales cycle, in fact, form a symbiotic relationship. Put another way, trust is developed through a sales cycle, and the sales cycle can be defined by trust. In the next chapter, I show how trust and the sales cycle affect one another, and why it is so important to understand the level of trust you have built relative to your competition.

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5 Trust Sales Cycle The Trust Meter Shows the Way Trust…affects the quality of every relationship, every communication, every project, every business venture, every effort in which we are engaged. —Stephen M.R. Covey Focusing on the foundation of the relationship, this chapter analyzes how trust is developed from the beginning of a buyer-seller relationship. Recall the trust meter I introduced in Chapter 1. Trust naturally progresses through an opportunity cycle. An example is shown in Figure 5-1.

Figure 5-1. Trust progression

It takes a while for your trust meter to fill up. You are an unknown entity to your customer as you enter into the sales cycle. You have not established intent, capability, results, or dedication. Your trust meter is empty (Figure 5-2).

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Figure 5-2.  Empty trust meter

Let's look at a possible scenario of how trust might progress through one sales cycle. If you are able to gain access to your customers, and you properly engage them, you can quickly start to show that your intent is to help or educate. As customers get more comfortable with you, they will share more as they define their needs. During this process, if you act as a consultant and focus on the customer, you can start to show capability. However, there is still some skepticism by the customer, so elements of intent and capability are shaded in a light grey on your trust meter (Figure 5-3). Capability has been demonstrated via sales skill and knowledge, but you have not yet demonstrated your product’s capability.

Figure 5-3. Trust meter early in the new customer acquisition phase

You start to show your dedication through the evaluation and closing stages. Their evaluation of your product or service is in line with the features and capabilities you sold. You are dedicated through the contract and negotiation process. You remain dependable, but you also show that you value your own solution. You continue to follow through on your commitments. You have not proved you will stick around after the sale yet, so you get only half the marks for dedication at this point. Your capability strengthens as you show more depth of knowledge for your own product and start to understand their business more deeply (Figure 5-4).

Trust-Based Selling

Figure 5-4. Trust meter as a customer begins to gain confidence in you

Next, your company implements the solution the customer has purchased. As a salesperson, you stick around through the implementation, ensuring there is a smooth transition from pre-sales to post-sales. So, your dedication quotient goes up. Your intent is now completely in line with the customer. The success of the implementation is as important to your company as it is to theirs (Figure 5-5).

Figure 5-5. Trust meter when you make your first sale

The top salespeople are not afraid to come back after the implementation and determine if the solution they sold to the customer actually produces the business results they promised during the earlier parts of the sales cycle. By demonstrating that you and your company can produce results, you fulfill the entire trust process (Figure 5-6).

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Figure 5-6.  Full trust meter

You can be considered the incumbent at this point. However, becoming a trusted advisor comes only by repeating this process several times. As trust grows, you get the chance to work on projects that are more important, and that have more impact on the business objectives of the customer. Almost every sales process falls short when salespeople do not take into account relationships, competition, or timing. Remember, the structure for most models is focused 100% on the opportunity. With a full trust meter, subsequent sales cycles become a non-linear process, as shown in Figure 5-7.

Figure 5-7. The sales cycle with the trust overlay

Trust-Based Selling Once you have earned the customer’s trust, the next time you enter into another opportunity, you do not have to start at the planning and target phases of the sales cycle. You now enter during the needs analysis stage (buyer process) or the qualify stage (sales process). Not only do you enter at a later stage, you don’t have to earn full trust from the beginning. You understand the customer’s business already, so you don’t have to spend as much time qualifying the customer. You can start to analyze the customer’s needs. Having already shown proper intent in a previous sales cycle, the customer will trust you and open up to you with more information. To steal a phrase from the movie Meet the Fockers, you are now in “the circle of trust.” (See Figure 5-8.)

Figure 5-8. The Circle of Trust

Broken Model While this all sounds great, the model is missing one huge element—“the guy,” or the incumbent. With the introduction of the incumbent, a model that is focused on opportunity breaks. At the beginning, your trust meter is empty and you must assume the incumbent’s is full (Figure 5-9).

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Figure 5-9.  Incumbent vs. new salesperson in the sales cycle

Once a vendor has established trust, they enter back into the next sales cycle at their earned status. The incumbent’s existing trust meter is the major challenge you face in your first year of sales, or anytime you’re trying to engage a new customer (Figure 5-10).

Figure 5-10.  Incumbent trust vs. new salesperson trust

Even if you try to focus on customer needs during your first sales cycle with a new customer, you may not be invited into the circle of trust. Without enough trust, customers will not always open up to you about their problems. Or, they share much more information with the incumbent. They may engage you with a proof of concept (the testing of your solution against customer needs) in the prove stage, and they may even bring you to negotiations, but the incumbent is trusted and you are not. Look at the close stage in the previous model. While the incumbent’s trust meter is full, your trust meter at best looks something like Figure 5-11.

Trust-Based Selling

Figure 5-11. Trust meter that shows what you are up against even when you have proven your concept to the customer

This simply is not enough trust to compete. Looking at the fully trusted sales cycle of the incumbent, you can see the process is completely condensed. They don’t have to plan and target, nor try to gain access to the customer. They enter into the qualify/develop stage ahead of a new vendor. If the incumbent is smart, they will spend the time qualifying and defining the needs of the customer. Since there is more trust, the prove stage is condensed. There is less scrutiny versus a new vendor. The close stage for the existing vendor is shortened because they have experience with the process. They are set up in the purchasing system, credit lines are established, and relationships may have been built with the people in the purchasing department. It is easier and less work for the customer to continue using their existing vendor (Figure 5-12).

Figure 5-12. The condensed sales cycle of a trusted incumbent

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Chapter 5 | Trust Sales Cycle This is a position of power for the incumbent vendor. Early in your relationship, it is like you are playing baseball on two entirely different fields. When the incumbent steps to the plate, they only have to run to third base and then back home for a run. Knowing it is not a fair game, your strategy must shift away from getting the opportunity and toward building the relationship. The new sales cycle is shown in Figure 5-13.

Figure 5-13. Trust before opportunity

With a new customer, 90% of all sales happen during planning and qualifying. In order to compete with an incumbent, you must build trust in the first two phases of the sales cycle. Ideally, you want to win the first opportunity you engage with a customer, and the only way to do that is to focus on building trust as much as you focus on the opportunity. This is the major focus of the book, so strategies to accomplish this kind of trust are presented at length.

Summary When competing against the incumbent, or the status quo, any sales model that focuses on the opportunity is broken. The simple realization that you’re not playing on a level playing field gives you huge insight—you go into the situation with open eyes, which can help you build trust and ultimately win business. The next chapter discusses in detail the advantages of focusing on establishing trust with new accounts versus focusing only on finding and closing opportunities.

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6 Build Business Relationships Job #1 If every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right. —Jerry Seinfeld On the television show Seinfeld, George is complaining about his life. He feels that every decision, every instinct he has, has been wrong. So, Jerry’s advice is to do the opposite. As salespeople, every instinct we have is to focus on the opportunity. Managers, after all, measure our progress by opportunity. However, if your focus with a new customer is only to find opportunities, you will fail. Although it’s not exactly the opposite of targeting opportunity, you need to build business relationships first. Once you gain access to a customer, the focus needs to remain on the customer. Focus on the customer’s needs and adding value to the customer’s experience before you look to fill your pipeline. Every sales skill is about focusing on customer issues, or finding a solution that will help them. This is the foundation to the establishment of trust. However, every sales process implemented today only tracks what is in it for the salesperson, focusing on going after tangible opportunities. This forces salespeople to lose their way with new customers. I illustrated several times in the previous chapters that opportunity can’t be trusted. You need to start by forging a relationship. The sales managers out there are probably thinking, “You can’t

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Chapter 6 | Build Business Relationships forecast on or close a relationship.” I understand that relationship is only part of the equation. It’s just that without it, there is no sale. Let me also reassure you that, by forgetting about opportunity during your initial engagements, you will find many more opportunities within the first year. Opportunities you actually have the chance to win.

The Outcome of Good Relationships Focusing on relationships has three major effects. One, it opens the window of opportunity. The more time you spend with the customer, the better chance you have to hit a purchase cycle and or a compelling event. Two, once you are engaged in an opportunity, you are more trusted; you are in a position to win. Three, by qualifying the customers you will make better use of your time. You will understand which customers fit with your product. You can start to be selective with your customers. Going back to the example of Tom in the Introduction, where Tom chases opportunities in his first year and struggles, what advice should Tom’s manager have given him after Q1? Had I been his manager, I would have said, “Tom, let’s go down your list and see which customers best match our ideal customer profile. Of these customers, which ones do you feel a personal connection to? How much time are you spending with these customers?” I would go on to say that I wanted him to spend half his time on establishing more trust with these customers. He can, for example, meet other people who are part of their decisions. He can organize “lunch and learns” for the customers. He can provide educational industry training or provide road maps detailing future products or services. He should provide this in the spirit of education, not with a goal of trying to sell something. He can also introduce his contacts to different people from his own organization. I will explore these in more detail, and show how such efforts help you establish trust with your customers.

Trust the System This is where you need to trust in the process. It is not easy to do. There is nothing in the forecast to warrant the time and resources Tom is devoting to this customer. Then why do it? You hear this all the time: “Sales is a numbers game,” but we need to change the concept of the numbers game. Looking at sales as a numbers game traditionally focuses on volume: volume of cold calls, volume of sales calls, volume of opportunities, and volume of pipeline. It means hard work, and a ton of wasted effort.

Trust-Based Selling It also means that you expect failure. I have worked with many organizations that require salespeople to carry a pipeline-to-quota ratio of 3:1, even up to 5:1. Assume your annual goal is $5,000,000 in sales, meaning that in a given quarter your quota is approximately $1,250,000, or 1/4th the annual quota. Your pipeline at the 3:1 ratio should be at a minimum of $4,200,000. The company sets this threshold because, historically, their sales team has a 30% close rate. Look at it in the negative: that is a 70% failure rate. That is 70% of your time on wasted deals, wasted conversations, and wasted administrative work. Continuing this train of thought, if you need to have $4,200,000 of pipeline and your average deal is $120,000, you need 35 deals in your forecast. If your sales calls-to-pipeline identification is 2:1, you need to go on 70 calls. If it takes eight calls to set one appointment, you need to make 560 calls. Sales is a numbers game. However, the numbers that you need to focus on are probabilities, not volume. Volume has a compounding effect of wasting time. Increasing your odds of winning frees up your time to work on even more qualified opportunities. In Las Vegas, for example, your best odds are at the black jack table, where the odds of winning are at best 48%. (This is a gross simplification; the odds of winning are based on many house rules, and your ability as a player to make the right decisions.) With a 48% chance of winning, in the long run, you lose. Some people think it’s crazy to play roulette where the odds on the simplest bet drop to 47%. No matter how many times you spin that wheel, in the long run, you will lose. In fact, the more times you spin the wheel, the more you lose. It is no different in sales. Turning up the volume of activity with lousy odds will just cause you to fail even more. It is better to work on the odds. Adding more volume to low-odds activities will compound your failure. Working to increase your odds of success at each stage of the sale with compound your success.

The tragedy in all of this is that the data has been staring us right in the face, but we ignore it. If you look across a large data set of all salespeople within a company, the close rate might be 70%. So, at first glance, it makes sense to use the 70% close rate as a metric to set pipeline targets. However, this includes the 80% of the not-so-good salespeople. Sales management ignores the pipeline rules for their top performers. Since Johnny has a great close rate, we will not pressure him for the higher ratio in pipeline. Since Johnny does not fit the model sales management expects, or manages to, he is labeled a sandbagger— someone who underforecasts their deals to look like a hero at the end of the quarter. Management looks at Johnny as the anomaly. Instead, why not use him as the role model? He is a top performer, so let’s look at his numbers, pipeline, close ratios, behavior, and selling strategy. Does it make any sense to manage

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Chapter 6 | Build Business Relationships to the non-performers? Instead of labeling Johnny as a sandbagger because of his low pipeline ratio, look at Johnny’s close rate. Now figure out why Johnny has a better close rate and teach the others some of his techniques. I guarantee you one thing: He is not being pressured to waste his time managing bad deals. Don’t play the volume game unless the odds are stacked in your favor. If you insist on seeing the numbers, look at the numbers from the proper angle. Here are the questions you (and sales management) should be asking: How do we increase prospecting success rates? How do we improve the number of calls we have to make to get an appointment? How do we increase the rate of sales calls to opportunities? How do we better qualify customers, so we are spending our time only on high-odds deals? How do we know when the odds of winning are bad? How do we stop managing to a 70% failure rate?

Why Trusting the System Makes Sense Purchase cycles are long in most B2B sales; sometimes there are up to 7–10 years between decisions. Again in IT, telephony equipment, networking, or data storage, purchases are made every four years or more. Assume for example that the customer uses a four-year purchasing cycle. Out of the 48 months between purchases, the customer might start looking for new product or vendor, if they do not automatically go to their preferred incumbent vendor, about four months in advance. Now assume that they interview two or three vendors in the first two months of this buy cycle. Your window is down to those two months at best. That’s two months in four years, a one out of 24 chance of hitting the customer at the right time. You can see this in Figure 6-1. The larger circle is 24 times bigger than the smaller circle. The small circle represents the two-month window you have to hit an opportunity. The medium-sized circle represents a one-year window of opportunity, or customers you are establishing relationships with.

Figure 6-1. Window of opportunity

Trust-Based Selling To play the volume game, you aim at 50 different customers, or you are looking for opportunity in 50 customers. So you give yourself 50 times the chance to find an opportunity. However, you know nothing about the customers. What are their decision criteria, who are the power players, what are their budgets, is there a strong incumbent? The list goes on. This is like hitting a moving target (Figure 6-2).

Figure 6-2.  Moving target opportunities

With a change of focus, you move from targeting opportunity to establishing a relationship with a customer. That will give you a much bigger target to aim at over time (Figure 6-3).

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Figure 6-3.  Stationary customer targets

Establishing trust takes time, so assume now you can aim at only half the customers, or 25. With this new approach, qualifying customers first becomes important. There is no sense in aiming at customers who are not going to buy. Customers in this case are no longer moving targets. They are stationary. Customers are there for the entire first year; they are not fleeting opportunities. Which of the targets looks easier to hit? The 50 small moving targets, or the 25 stationary targets? Not only is it easier to hit the stationary targets, but when you do hit an opportunity, you have a much better chance of closing business. When aiming only at opportunity, you become column fodder—the vendor uses you to keep their preferred vendors honest—meaning your chances of winning are greatly diminished. Nonetheless, most sales managers tell you to shoot more arrows, make more sales calls, and work harder. I have seen some reps succeed on sheer will, and some on luck. Most of us are not that lucky, and most of us are unwilling to work that hard. The secret, once again, is to focus on the customer, the relationship, instead of the opportunity. Don’t aim at the small circles; aim at the larger ones. Work on building the relationship when there is no opportunity. No matter if you are cold calling, networking, or getting to the customer through referrals, your main goal should be to understand the customer, and start building trust.

Trust-Based Selling If you find opportunity, you must be honest with yourself and truly qualify the deal. Do you have a chance to win? Or are you the column fodder I have discussed? If you don’t find opportunity, and the customer states they are not in the market—“I am not looking for X at this time”—your answer should be, “That’s okay, I would prefer not to start our business relationship in the middle of your buying cycle. We can spend time now understanding your needs, which gives us time to show our value and earn your trust.” Your intent quickly goes from “they want to sell me something,” to “they are here to help our business.” Taking this approach builds trust instantly. When you are willing to spend time with customers not currently in the market, they begin to trust you more. They will more readily believe you want to help their business grow and relieve problems.

Do the Math: Opportunity versus Relationship In the previous example, I showed how the right focus improves your chances of finding real opportunities. But, how does the math work? What happens to your pipeline? In the previous example, you were aiming at 50 customers, and you had a 48-month buying cycle, so your window of opportunity is maybe two months long. To be more generous, I will give you a window of three months. Your chance of finding any opportunity with a customer, real or not, is only 6.25% (3/48). Now multiply that by 50 customers, and you are working a total of three deals. I am going to be generous with this example again, and say that you sell multiple items and now you find twice as many deals, or six. Remember you are mainly column fodder if you don’t have a relationship, but I will be incredibly generous again and award you a close rate of 33%. (It is probably closer to 15%.) Congratulations—you will win two opportunities in a year. In the IT industry, where vendors have direct relationships with the customer, with no help from a partner, this is typically what you see from 80% of new hires. The numbers will be slightly better if the company has existing relationships with the customer. Here is the math if you aim for the big circles, possible only when you aim at establishing the relationship with the customer before you chase opportunities.

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Chapter 6 | Build Business Relationships First, work 20% smarter and aim at only 40 customers. Now, do not look for opportunity, but look to qualify customers, and spend time with them. You are engaged with the customer whether or not there exists an opportunity. Again, how you stay engaged without opportunity is covered later in the book. The window of opportunity of each customer raises on average from three months to nine. With the same 48-month sales cycle, you now have a window of opportunity of 19% (9/48). Over 40 customers, you will see 7.5 targeted opportunities. However, here is the real strength of this strategy. In actuality, you will see many more opportunities. In your educational approach, you will pique the interest of your customer about opportunities they may not have been thinking of. And while spending time with the customers, once you have established trust, you will find they will start to bring you more opportunities. Conservatively, this will double the number of opportunities you’re exposed to. For our purposes here, that’s four opportunities per engaged customer. Increased trust also brings higher close rates. In this example, I will be ultra conservative and use a slightly higher close rate than when you did not have a relationship, or 50%. This math now works out to this way: 40 customers X 19% window X 4 opportunities per customer X 50% deal close rate = 15.2 deals There are many circumstances that influence all of these numbers. But in general, you are looking at five times the number of won deals. Typically, with this approach you will not only have more deals, but the deals will be bigger. The “numbers game” shows that establishing relationships will drive more opportunity. Focusing on opportunity does not correlate into driving relationships. When you chase opportunities, you have a limited number of relationships built by the year’s end. In year two, you will still be chasing opportunities and working any deal or customer you can find. In the other scenario, you have purchasing relationships with at least seven customers. And, you have started building trust with up to 20 more customers. You can stop chasing opportunities, because with the trust you have built, customers will start presenting opportunities to you. This will also lead to more referrals. This is the difference between chasing deer, and knowing the land like the back of your hand.

Trust-Based Selling

Summary The goal of this chapter is to drive home the point that focusing solely on opportunity is not the most productive use of your time. I have stated this a few times, but it’s worth repeating. Your success does not depend on the first opportunity you find, it depends on a long-lasting relationship with the customer. Now that I have explained the strategy, you need a way to track progress. In the next chapter, I will combine the aspects of opportunity and trust to give you the equation you need to win business. This equation will help you develop a process to follow, and help you determine your ability to compete with more established vendors.

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7 Understand the Sales Equation Why Chasing Opportunities Does Not Work Every sale has five basic obstacles: no need, no money, no hurry, no desire, no trust. —Zig Ziglar I have discussed that chasing opportunities is setting the sales person up for failure. However, it is obvious that you need opportunities to close business. The goal of this chapter is to introduce relationship, or trust, into the discussion about an opportunity. I will develop a simple formula that equals sales success with new customers. In Chapter 4, I listed these elements as the core to winning deals. • Pain. Without pain, or need, there is no order. A compelling event is pain with a time element. This is the best type of pain because it makes predicting and closing business easier. A compelling event means the customer has a deadline. Without a deadline, opportunities will drag on indefinitely. • Solution. The customer needs to envision that your offering will solve the pain or fill the need. The customer needs to see value in your solution. The increased revenue or cost savings of the solution you provide must be greater than the cost of your solution.

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Chapter 7 | Understand the Sales Equation • Authority. You need a “yes” from someone within the organization who has the authority to purchase. Otherwise known as power. • Understanding. You need to identify the purchasing decision process. These are the items that customers need to make a decision to purchase, but are they the items they need to purchase from you? The answer is no. Each bullet can be claimed by you—and by a competitor. If the customer has a compelling event, it’s a compelling event for you and for your competition. The competition will have a valuable solution. You hope you have more value. Both you and the competitor could have access to power. An incumbent most likely will have greater access. Both you and the competitor understand the decision process. Again, the incumbent will most likely know this better than you. One last bullet needs to be added to the discussion. • Relationship. You must have a trusted, valued business relationship with the customer. I have been discussing this last bullet at length. I believe I have demonstrated how important it is to value the relationship as part of the sales equation. Without a good relationship, there is no sale. When you lose a deal to price, most likely you are losing because you did not have a good relationship. Price is the excuse the customer gives you because it is definitive and impersonal. You must have all these elements for a sale, from which I can derive a simple formula for sales success: CE x V x P x DP x (TR)2 = Sale Here’s what each of the elements stands for: • CE – Compelling event • V – Value • P – Yes from power • DP – Decision process • TR – Trusted relationship, which is squared due to its importance The equation is multiplicative, meaning that if any one of the elements is zero, the sale does not exist. Therefore, with no relationship, there is no sale. The equation also squares the trust element. Trust has an exponential effect on your chances to win. When you are new, you have almost no trust, and with zero trust, you have zero chance to win. You must assume that the existing vendor is fully trusted (Figure 7-1).

Trust-Based Selling

Figure 7-1. Trust difference

What is the formula for trust? I have one, but first let me say that I understand relationships can’t be measured with a number or represented by a formula. The intent of this formula is to give you a mechanism to measure your relative strength against a competitor’s, using metrics rather than just gut feeling. It also helps you determine how to systematically drive toward a trusted relationship. So here is a simple “formula” for trust. Trust = I + C + D + R Again, here’s what each item stands for: • I = Intent • C = Capability • D = Dedication • R = Results Here, then, is the expanded sales equation: CE x V x P x DP x (D+I+C+R)2 = Sale While this might look a bit complicated, it really is simple. In order to win a sale with a new customer, you need to be concerned with every element of this equation, such as the opportunity-focused sales criteria of a compelling event, value, power, and the decision process. Especially with new customers, the trust elements must be taken into account: Intent, Capability, Dependability, and Results. This formula offers a deeper level of inspection of each opportunity.

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Chapter 7 | Understand the Sales Equation Concentrating on the trust elements, each is rated 0 to 2. A score of 0 means you have not addressed this trust issue, so you must assume the buyer rates you a 0. Give yourself 1 point for trust that can be assumed based on referrals, or when you have implied a certain amount of trust through actions in the sales cycle. 2 points indicates that you have made an effort or otherwise measured within the element. For example, you have provided education to show good intent, done a product evaluation to show results, conducted seminars to show capability, and so on. This points system is obviously subjective. It is better to overate your competition and underrate yourself. You do not want a false sense of security. It’s better to identify weaknesses and take positive actions to strengthen them. Figure 7-2 shows 0 points for results, 1 point each for dedication and intent, and 2 points for capability, which is a 4 out of a possible 8. You do not have a fair shot at the business, unless you have a unique value, a niche product, or are within 1-2 points of your competition.

Figure 7-2. Trust points

If you can get to the point where you have 6 out of 8, as shown in Figure 7-3, you have a much better chance of winning than with 4 out of 8.

Figure 7-3.  More Equal Trust Levels

Trust-Based Selling There are any number of trust combinations that will work. There may be cases where the incumbent has lost some element of trust with a customer, and that gives you a chance to compete or even have an advantage. Maybe there is a situation where you have demonstrated dedication, some intent, results, and capability. Maybe the incumbent has demonstrated results and capability, but dedication and intent have suffered due to lack of ongoing attention. Suddenly you just leveled the score to 5 vs. 5. Now you can compete evenly (Figure 7-4).

Figure 7-4.  Equal Trust Levels

Allow me to repeat myself. I understand relationships can’t be measured. I understand that there is a mix of personal and business relationships with each customer. This method is a way to analyze your relative strength against your competitor’s. Your goal is not to walk into a customer like a robot with a relationship checklist. The intent of these strategies is to ensure you have taken conscious, proactive steps in developing a trusted business relationship.

The Great News While the task of competing against an incumbent may seem daunting, it is by no means insurmountable; otherwise, new salespeople would never make it, nor would new companies ever get off the ground. In fact, it can be easy to unseat the incumbent. While you are focusing on systematically building trust, the incumbent is taking their customer for granted, looking for new customers, and waiting for their existing customers to call them with new orders. Figure  7-5 shows the buyer’s concern about relationship versus the typical salesperson.

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Figure 7-5. Vendor-buyer relationship gap

As you can see, once a salesperson makes a sale, they typically don’t come back around and measure results or stay focused on the customer. Before the sale, the relationship is more important to the salesperson than to the customer. However, after the sale, the customer wants a stronger relationship. A lot of times the salesperson is off looking for other opportunities, or assumes the customer will just present them with the next opportunity. As a result, the trust meter of the incumbent is not as full as it could or should be. The customer’s expectations of the vendor are typically not met after the sale. However, you must assume that incumbent trust is full and systematically address each element of trust so you can compete with confidence. It is possible that, by the time you’ve developed an opportunity with a new customer, you could be more trusted than the current vendor(s). Always assume the incumbent vendor has a trust meter that is full or close to it. That will encourage you to develop your relationship fully and do your best to provide value that makes a difference to the customer’s business.

Trust-Based Selling

Summary I have harped on relationships. But I think it is important to drive home the point from multiple angles. Your entire sales training—how you have been managed, how you have been measured and, intuitively, how you have tackled your territories—focused on opportunity. I hope by now I have shown, demonstrated, beat you over the head, and just repeated this concept to the point that you understand how important relationship-building is. Now that you have the why behind you, you’re ready turn to the how. It is easy to tell salespeople to work on building a relationship, but you need systematic, creative approaches to build this trust. You must build trust before you have a chance to work on opportunity, so you will spend most of your time in the following chapters learning how to build trust in each stage of the sales cycle.

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8 Building Trustworthiness Get Ready to Start Confidence is preparation. Everything else is beyond your control. —Richard Kline As we have discussed, the idea of relationship, or building trust, is a crucial element of closing sales. However most sale processes ignore this important fundamental. While your customer is in status quo, you are in the planning stage of the sales process. This stage is also ignored by process, and it is a great place to start building a foundation of trust. In this chapter, I address the “homework” activities you must do. This chapter helps you: • Address your capabilities and learn to develop sales skills and product knowledge. • Develop some simple messages that will engage your prospects in conversation rather than just deliver a monologue on what you do or sell. • Construct an online presence that will instill trust in your prospects before you even talk to them.

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Capability Customers will evaluate you the moment you walk in the door. Trust is earned over time, but one element they can and will make an instant judgment about is your capability. Capability can be broken into three elements. • Sales skills • Industry knowledge • Product knowledge The demands on the salesperson are greater today than ever. An average salesperson working 10–15 years ago could get away with being a walking datasheet. The only way customers learned about new products was from salespeople visiting with them face to face. Customers had to listen to a salesperson go on about their products. Now, with the Internet, customers have instant access to your professional profiles, as well as your company and product information. Your customers have a good understanding of your products before you step foot in the door. They do not need a salesperson to tell them what they already know. Today, customers expect their salespeople to bring value. That’s why you need product knowledge beyond the datasheet. They want to see that you are experienced and understand how your products fit into the larger picture at their company. They want salespeople who understand their company and issues. They want salespeople with industry knowledge. They want subject matter experts. Let’s look more in-depth at the three elements that make up capability.

Sales Skills While sales skills are a capability, they are integral to your ability to show proper intent. Your customers want to know you are there to help them. The ability to listen, ask questions, and guide your customer through their buying process with ease will instill a sense of trust with you. I have already stated my opinion on sales skills. They are very difficult to change. As with golf, the quickest way to get better results is through better strategy. Continued improvement of your swing is still a must if you want even lower scores. Same with sales. Start by learning proper strategy, and then learn the sales process to keep you organized. But continue to become a better-skilled salesperson. Ongoing sales training must be part of the planning process. This is your career, so treat it as so. It is ironic that the most important function in any company is sales, because salespeople are the least trained people in their craft. Sales brings revenue, and without revenue, there is no business. Lawyers, HR, IT, and finance all require four years or more of education. Each one of

Trust-Based Selling these also requires ongoing education, training, and certifications. Yet most salespeople have one sales course, which they half pay attention to, every two to three years. There is a wealth of information on sales skills, strategy, and process. Aim to learn something daily.

Early in my career, I worked hard, but I just showed up. (By the way, showing up will put you in the top 50%, and working hard will put you in the top 30%.) I understood my products and services, and I followed up with customers. However, I was by no means a student of my career; I just winged it from a skills standpoint. A few years back, I was eating lunch with a coworker at a sports bar. ESPN was on the big projection screen running a story on an all-pro linebacker who came into NFL training camp out of shape, and his job was in jeopardy. I remember saying to my friend, “What an idiot! If I was making $4 million a year, hell $500k a year, I would make sure I was in shape.” Coincidently, earlier that month one of our top salespeople made a huge sale, with a commission that propelled that salesperson to a commission in that range. It then dawned on me. “I can make $500k selling. Why am I out of shape?” Learn your craft, know your industry, and understand your offerings. Once you learn about them, learn to do them better. An all-pro athlete never stops training, a doctor does not stop reading medical journals, and your customers do not stop learning about new ideas on how to solve their problems. You should never stop learning. Here is the simplest advice on sales skills ever: Be aware of you how much you are talking. After each sales call, ask yourself if you learned more about the customer than she learned about you.

Industry Knowledge Research your industry and your customer’s industry until you know it inside and out. This will give you a much better idea of your customer’s potential problems. It will also help you position your offerings much better, help you with messaging, and add value with your customers.

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Chapter 8 | Building Trustworthiness Also research the job titles of the people you are calling on. There are web sites specific to almost any title. • www.ceo.com • www.cfo.com • www.it-director.com • www.hr.com • www.thelawyer.com No matter your target prospect, there is plenty of information regarding the issues and trends that affect their roles. This knowledge helps you gain access to prospects and shows the customers that you can help. For example, if you are meeting with a CIO, and you know the top five concerns of CIOs at this time, your conversation with her will be much more than just about product. Your potential customers want to know how you can help them with their concerns before they want to hear anything about your product. If you do not have immediate access to a prospect, share industry trends and news on a proactive basis via e-mail or regular mailings, which will get more attention. These items can be online articles, information your marketing department provides, or ideally content you have personally generated. You might not be in the position to do this if you are new to an industry, but if you can provide these kinds of materials, you will start to show expertise (capability) even before you speak to a prospect. This is more effective than sending product literature. Sending product literature before you qualify your customer needs will only put you out of buyer alignment. So don’t send product information unless it’s requested. The other effect of doing this research is that it will give you confidence when you do engage your prospect, and you will better understand their pain and issues. This enables you to better position your solution. Plus, your conversations will have much more meaning for the customer. The information here is about understanding the industry challenges of your buyer. In the chapter on Niche Selling, we will introduce you to buying personalities of your customers. They will enable you to better position solutions to match their concerns.

Product Knowledge This may sound illogical, but there can be some dangers to having too much product knowledge. I have been saying all along your focus needs to be on the customer. With an abundance of product knowledge, most salespeople have the tendency to talk too much about the product. It is okay to be an expert in your field, but you must concentrate on customer needs first. Look again at the buyer concerns graph (Figure 8-1).

Trust-Based Selling

Figure 8-1.  Shifting buyer concerns

The most important element of trust is intent. All too often, salespeople feel that capability of their products is the most important thing. Staying in alignment with your customer will allow you to show your capability in due time, without sacrificing intent. There is a time to focus on the solution, and it’s toward the end of the needs analysis stage. To help fight the urge to talk product too quickly, you need to define product knowledge beyond the features and benefits. Figure 8-2 shows general levels (categories) of knowledge you can have with your offering. The categories of product knowledge are slightly different for each industry, so I have attempted to make these as broad as possible.

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Figure 8-2.  Knowledge matrix; N stands for Need, and S for Solution

Again, there is a slight slant toward technical sales in Figure 9-2, but this matrix can be adapted for any industry. First, align the knowledge categories with the buyer concern graph. Start with analyzing the need from the business and technical aspects. You must understand the pains your products help alleviate. Then you need to know which questions will help you better qualify the customer and their needs. For clarity, in the Buyer Concern column, N means Need, and S means Solution. The line between the Business and Technical focus is meant to be the highest level of knowledge, in other words, the “50,000 foot” view. As you move up the categories in business, and down in technical, the depth of knowledge increases. Notice that the high-level knowledge corresponds to the Needs development of the Buyer Concern graph (Figure 8-1). Again, as you move away from the high-level knowledge, buyer concern shifts toward solution information. As you migrate toward the evaluation stages and more solution information is needed, you may need assistance from management on the business side, and from the technical support team on the technical side. The amount of knowledge you have on any subject can be endless. Which categories of knowledge will benefit you most? Figure 8-3 shows the sweet spot of sales knowledge—it’s all about customer needs. The major problem most companies have with training is they believe product training needs to be done by product experts. Experts are asked to “dumb it down” for the sales teams.

Trust-Based Selling

Figure 8-3.  Knowledge matrix showing what product experts think are the most important items compared to what good salespeople know are the most important things

The product experts stay focused on the product, taking the simplest information about the product, and using it to educate the sales team. Look at the lower-right corner of Figure 9-3; you can see that they completely miss where sales should be focusing their conversations. This problem is compounded with new salespeople. Here’s why. As mentioned, 90% of the time spent with new customers is in the planning and needs analysis stages. Your product experts are aiming the sales team past that stage, and directly at the evaluation stage. I will explore the importance of this in establishing intent with the customer in Chapter 11. At this point, just make a note that you cannot sacrifice intent for capability. When you are studying your product, make sure you can talk in the sweet spot. Starting from the Business/Technical focus, first understand the business pain, along with the technical pain your solution can help eliminate. Then learn which questions can help you uncover that pain. Have a story about how you can help solve the customer’s business pain, and have a story about how your offering helps address the business pain. Do not be satisfied with the product training provided by most companies. You might only have basic product training. If management will not provide you with this level of knowledge, analyze the customer’s pains and determine the questions you need to ask on your own. This is made easier with the more industry knowledge you gain through your own research and experience.

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Example Let’s go back to the example of purchasing a home. Although Figure 8-3 is set up for a business-to-business sale in the IT industry, in this case I will define the categories of knowledge for a real estate agent who works in a new development/neighborhood. The technical aspects become the housing and neighborhood data. I will start what is most important to the customer. 1. Why customers move in general. 2. Why this customer is moving, and what they are looking for in a home and community. 3. High-level knowledge about the community. 4. High-level knowledge construction.

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5. Detailed specs of each home. 6. How the home was designed and built. 7. How the framing was done, electrical specs of the home, and so on. As you can see, the depth of knowledge can increase exponentially. However, the selling sweet spot includes levels 1-3 and possibly 4. If the customer has more detailed questions about home specs, the real estate agent can rely on the contractor. Now look at this from the business/money side. 1. Understanding the budget—minimum, maximum, and stretch budget 2. Understanding home owner dues or fees 3. Understanding the financial information required to qualify for a loan 4. Understanding the types of mortgages available 5. Understanding how each type of mortgage works 6. Understanding how the loan underwriting process works Again the details can get overwhelming, and the real estate agent can get help from a mortgage broker. The selling sweet spot is 1 and 2, and possibly 3. When you stay in the sweet spot, you are showing proper intent.

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 You don’t ask an electrical subcontractor to teach the real estate agent how to sell the community. But this is exactly what happens in most business-to-business sales—the product experts teach product knowledge. You therefore need to educate yourself on buyer concerns to get an idea of what matters to your customers.

Messaging will be discussed more in the next chapter. I’ve kept this pretty simple here, but remember that when developing stories you need to take into consideration who you are talking to at the prospect organization. Different customer titles have different concerns and buying behaviors. Messaging needs to be tailored to your audience.

What Do You Do? You need to learn to answer the question, “What do you do?”. This seems like a very simple exercise, but when you ask most salespeople this question, it takes them way too long to answer. Whether it is on the phone, on a web site, in an elevator, or during your first meeting, you need to be prepared for this trap. I call this a trap because it pushes you in the direction of presenting a monologue, when your goal should be a conversation. Be careful, because even management is directing you into this trap by making every salesperson memorize an “elevator pitch.” This is typically a 20–30 second monologue about how the company is great and how they can help the customer. Elevator pitches come across as memorized; they all sound the same, and are filled with buzzwords and marketing hype. Worse, the customer stops listening 10 seconds in (and I am being generous). It should be called the elevator shaft. Your goal is a conversation with the customer. So, what should you do when asked about your company? Instead of an elevator pitch, you need to develop an elevator “hook.” An elevator hook helps you start a conversation with the customer. I will take some time here to set up the concept of the elevator hook, but it will take no longer than eight seconds to deliver it. The hook returns the focus to the customer and initiates a conversation. Selling is simple; ask questions to stay focused on the customer.

The elevator hook engages the customer in a conversation and includes a reference story that implies a referral. With customer referrals, you gain more trust. With conversations, you show more intent, and therefore more trust. This process will keep you in alignment with buyer concerns. This keeps you in the qualifying stage, focused on needs, rather than jumping straight to the solution, which is well into the buying process.

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Chapter 8 | Building Trustworthiness The first objective is to turn the question “what do you do?” into a conversation. The best way to start any conversation is with a question. So, when you are asked,“what does your company do?,” you respond with a question. That’s the hook. You ask a question that engages the customer. A question solicits a response and curiosity from the customer. Come up with questions centered on issues that you know affect most of your customer base. These questions should solicit a quick yes or no. There is a time for opened-ended questions when you are exploring the customer needs. However, in this case you want to box the customer into a yes response. If you understand your customer, the industry, its challenges, and how you can help, this is simple. These questions are simple to develop. You can simply Google “top concerns for hospitals, CFOs, CIOs, universities, manufacturing, IT organizations,” or what have you. You can have different questions for different job titles and vertical markets. Again, your goal is to hit an obvious issue confronting your customers today. Examples include: • “Do you think you spend too much on paper copies?” • “Do you have issues with explosive data growth?” • “Does the introduction of mobile devices by your employees onto your network cause you problems?” • “Do you know how complex it is to set facility security properly?” • “Are your receivables at the level you would like?” • “Do you know how hard it is to accurately forecast 90 days out?” You now have the customer set up with the elevator hook. If you hit on an issue customers have, their response should be, “yes.” This will grab their attention, and you already got them to admit they have an issue. And, the yes is an invitation to say what you do, but without the details. Your response at this time is simple: “We help with that.” You have checked for interest. They said they have the issue, so they will want to know how you can help. Now you can proceed with a reference story, one that starts to build trust. I will break this down further, but frame your reference story like this: A good illustration of how we help is by what we did for a customer in your industry. This company had issue X. We helped them fix that issue, or we delivered a solution that added Z value. With our solution, the customer experienced Y results.

Trust-Based Selling The goal of this method is to build your trust meter (Figure 8-4) with a simple paragraph. The elements of trust need to be woven into the story. Let’s break down the story based on the trust elements: • Intent:You helped the customer. • Capability: You understood their problem. You brought a solution that fixed their issue. • Dedication: You stuck around to implement and measure results. • Results: The customer was able to achieve what you promised.

Figure 8-4. Trust meter after your reference story

Here is quick example of a good reference story. We helped Acme (intent) by evaluating their supply chain inefficiencies and made recommendations on how to improve their systems (capability). The implemented improvements increased their inventory turnover rates by 100%, resulting in $2,000,000 of savings. (We remained after the sale, which shows we are dedicated. And we measured results.) Use the 15 seconds the customer gives you to build trust, not to bore the customer with the canned elevator pitch. You need to practice these reference stories just as you practice the company pitch. But with questions, hooks, and stories, use conversational English, not marketing hype. Unlike with elevator pitches, you do not need to include the latest buzzwords or marketing fluff. Don’t try to include everything you can do for the customer. Focus on an unique value you bring to customers. If you offer something unique, there is a better chance the door will open.

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Chapter 8 | Building Trustworthiness The elevator pitch is not the most effective tool. Using an elevator hook, in contrast, helps you start a conversation, pique interest, and frame a customer reference story. This is much more powerful. Once you have the reference story down and deliver it to the customer, you should focus right back on the customer by asking more about their business.

Your Online Presence When you initially contact a customer whether through email, cold call, or referral, what is the first thing they are going to do? They will Google you, your company, or both. Google yourself! What comes up—pictures of your last New Year’s Eve bash, or a professional LinkedIn profile? Knowing what you look like online is the first step. Today’s leading networking site for professionals is LinkedIn. What does your LinkedIn profile look like? Is it like most others? Does it stand out? Does it offer anything to the customer? Is it simply a resume, or does it express the value you can offer? You need to use your profile to show proper intent and strong capability— the value you can bring to customers. Most profiles are nothing more than a resume import. LinkedIn actually guides you into this mistake by importing your resume to build your profile. Although it is okay to show your career history, it should not be the first thing people see. So do not be lazy here! The intent you need to demonstrate is how you can help your potential customers. Customers do not care about your resume. They want to see the value you can bring to them. The first things your customers see on your profile are your name and headline. Use the headline to indicate your specialty, or your area of subject matter expertise. The next section in LinkedIn is the skills section. List your industry expertise in more detail. When describing your skills, concentrate on customer trigger points: • “I help customers develop their disaster-recovery strategies.” • “I help doctors increase in-office revenue streams.” • “I help customers drive business efficiencies.” • “I strive to understand my customer’s business first.”

Trust-Based Selling If you truly want to be aligned with the buyer cycle, ask questions in your skills section. You are using the elevator hook to keep them interested, so they will read on: • “Is your data storage a bottleneck of performance?” • “Does your broker become a stranger after he collects his portfolio management fee?” • “Are government regulations bogging down your finance department?” • “Are you concerned with patient security?” You can make the skills section as long as you like. I recommend that you make it long enough so that the customer has to actively scroll to see your work history section. Positioning your skills section in this manner can show proper intent and capability. That way, you can get a jump on building your trust meter (Figure 8-5).

Figure 8-5. Trust meter when you do a good job with your online profile

You can demonstrate dependability via recommendations. Do not hesitate to ask colleagues for recommendations that talk about your character. Expect to be asked to reciprocate by writing a recommendation for them. As part of your profile, list industry articles you have written, as well as blogs you write. This is the “give to get” mentality discussed earlier. As part of your profile, do not forget to include your contact information; if someone is looking for help, help them find you! Once your profile is up to snuff, it is time to ramp up your activity and contribute to the industry.

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Proactive Online Presence Your professional profile is a passive entity that gets no attention unless you are proactive. How do you become proactive online to get yourself noticed? First, understand which groups your customers are members of. When you connect with customers and colleagues, take the time to look at their groups. Join those groups. Look for discussion threads that you can participate in. Become a subject matter expert, a thought leader. Much like in the earlier planning stages, you do this by subscribing to industry magazines, regularly checking in on industry web sites, and then formulating your own thoughts, posting comments, or starting a discussions. If you are not an expert, look for whitepapers, industry articles, or professional development material you can share. Just make sure you give proper reference to others’ work. Your goal is to develop an active online presence. With increased activity you become more visible to peers and potential customers. You want others to view you as an expert, thus increasing the chance they will call you.

Summary When you are establishing your territory, or trying to penetrate a new account, you will spend 90% of your time in the planning and qualifying stages. As you progress, planning becomes easier. The information you need to gather will already be at your fingertips. Planning becomes more of an updating exercise. When you are new, all this up-front planning will pay off. With everything you are doing to plan, make sure you have the end game in mind—building trust. The next chapter discusses what service or product is best to use when securing new customers.

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9 Niche Selling Lead with Something Unique Attack him [the enemy] where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected. —Sun Tzu While this book is about developing trust with customers, trust can also be used to develop strategy. By understanding the trust you possess vs. the trust built by a competitor, you can start to formulate a game plan for penetrating accounts, messaging, and closing the business. The first major tactic in approaching new customers is putting relationship before opportunity. The second major tactic for approaching new customers or a new sales territory is to determine which product or service to lead with. Using the concepts of trust, I will develop a model that you can use to make this determination. With all the talk about relationship and qualifying the customer, you eventually have to sell something. In the sales situation with Tom (the person who chased opportunities, had a large pipeline, but never closed a sale), the manager suggested that he learn about, and lead with, the company’s top selling product, the products that generate the most revenue, and solutions that are the most competitive in the IT industry. I will first point out why this is an incorrect strategy, then discuss the correct product selection. The primary reason for this chapter is to determine which products or services to lead with. If you have only one item or service to sell, not all the concepts of this chapter will apply to you. However, there is a secondary value of this chapter, which is understanding your customer’s purchasing personality, and how you can use it to properly present the solution you are selling. If your company is bringing a new product to market, memorize this chapter.

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To Whom Will You Sell? Geoffrey Moore’s book Crossing the Chasm describes how to bring a new technology to market. He adapted this concept from research done at Iowa State University, which describes the acceptance of new products based on customers’ demographic and psychological characteristics. The original purpose was to track the purchase patterns of hybrid corn seed by farmers. This model has been widely used. These concepts adapt to most sales situations. What you should get from this chapter is an understanding of personal buyer personalities, how they fit within an organization, and how you position yourself to get that first deal. In this chapter I adapt the methods for marketing new technologies to work in any selling situation.. The chapter’s conversation is built around this model (Figure 9-1).

Figure 9-1.  Innovation adoption lifecycle curve

As you can see, there are five buyer personalities. The premise is that you must follow a logical specific progression for each type of customer in order to successfully introduce a new technology. This is called the innovation adoption curve or lifecycle. The area of the curve indicates the relative size of the market. Here is a brief summary of each personality type, including how they buy, and what they require.

Innovators The first category is the innovator or techie. The techie can be identified as the type of individual who likes to be at the early stages of a new product or service. This is the type of customer who just likes to be first. They have the first mobile phone, the first laptop, or the house in a new neighborhood. This is the type of person who reports software bugs. This report is made not out of frustration, but out of pride. They like to be recognized as helping define the final product.

Trust-Based Selling In sales, the mantra is that customers buy in this order—you, the company, then the product. But in the innovator category, customers put product first. These people tend to be lower in an organization, but not always, as I will discuss later. Sometimes, meeting with an innovator might be your only way to get a foot in the door. But you must remember, this is a small number of people within a company, and typically their budgets are extremely small.

Visionaries The second personality is the early adopter, or visionary. The visionary is the person who looks at a new product, and looks for ways to make magnitudesof-order improvement in a process, or to their business. This personality type is viewed as a risk taker. Their ideas are grand. They like the big picture but get lost in the details. This buyer wants a working product; they want to implement the product, not trouble shoot it. They are more concerned with other things, like what this product can do for their company or career. In an organization they tend to be first-line managers, are younger, and are trying to move up the corporate ladder. Often, they are ambitious.

Pragmatics Next is the early majority, or pragmatics. This is the first of the larger markets. By definition, pragmatics tend to be very practical. They are not risk takers, but are looking for products or services that are proven, and will help the company make small incremental improvements to costs or revenues. They want a product that has been proven in the market. They want a product they can purchase, and the companies they do business with must have references. These people are very well respected. They tend to be tenured within the organization, and carry director-level titles.

Conservatives Conservatives, or the late majority, are about the status quo. Conservatives purchase a product once it has become mainstream. The product is “complete,” tested, proven, and usually from the leading vendor in a particular market. From conservatives, you often hear statements like, “No one ever got fired for buying [insert big name here].” This type of buyer tends to be further up within an organization. They are tenured, but tend to have a “mitigate the risk” mentality of doing business. They are more interested in career preservation than career advancement. This is the largest group within a company, region, or market.

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Laggards Laggards, I will not go into detail with laggards, since they are a small market, and it’s not necessary for the setup of our strategies. Laggards have an “old school” mentality; if it ain't broke, don’t fix it. For example, some still don’t see the need for a computer. “We always use manual ledgers; why would I need a computer?” This is an extreme example, but you get the point. Customers in this category are usually related to the culture of the company. For example, buyers for a manufacturer of furniture will tend to be toward the back of the curve. But you do sometimes find a visionary working for a laggard company. Laggard markets can be lucrative. In the IT industry, some customers hold onto equipment that is way past the support life of the manufacturer. So replacement parts become scarce and therefore expensive. If you are in this type of market, just know that having a visionary message will usually be wasted on this type of buyer. To fully understand the concepts around these personalities, consider these real-life examples.

Example: Techie in a Conservative World My brother is in medical device sales. His company was introducing a new product that would reduce the need for some nasal surgeries. This device could be used in the doctor’s office. The cost-benefit to the doctor was huge. He could do this procedure, as stated, in the office. It would take 15–20 minutes versus taking hours at a surgical center. The profit to the doctor was the same when you compared the surgical procedure versus the in-office procedure. However, for the doctor, the true savings lay in opportunity costs. He saved hours of time that he could use to see (and bill) other patients. Given this great advantage to help doctors save time and make more money, my brother set out with his product. His sales in the first six months were almost nonexistent, and so were the results of the company. The main objection was that the product was not proven. Doctors tend to be conservative. They wanted to see that this procedure had been done safely for years. They want to be sure there are no long-term negative effects. The message about large improvements to the bottom line was aimed at a visionary buyer. But in the medical field, the curve is shifted more to the right. Even visionaries in the medical field tend to be more conservative since they are dealing with human lives. So, the visionary market is very small in medicine. As a matter of luck, my brother called on a doctor who happened to be an inventor himself. This doctor was a straight-up techie. This is the perfect first

Trust-Based Selling customer for new technology. This doctor, without references, went straight to his patients and started performing procedures. As mentioned, innovators tend to be lower in the organization. However, in this case the doctor owned the practice. During the course of the procedures he pointed out issues he saw, made recommendations for improvements, and had ideas for add-ons to this product. The message of increased billings for this doctor was of little value. He wanted to play with the latest technology. Leveraging the success of this doctor, my brother was able to grow his business. Outside events helped as well. For one thing, the company was smart enough to listen to the early clients and make improvements to the product. A couple of doctors saw the business vision and the competitive advantage to offering this procedure, and they built huge practices specializing in this procedure. This led to a wider use of the product that could ease the concerns of the conservatives. The intent of the example is to show the progression that a new product takes coming to market. In terms of sales strategy, there are few takeaways. First, understand where your product resides on the curve, so you can keep an eye out for customers who properly fit. Second, know your customer adoption personality. Third, tailor your message to match the person. When dealing with a techie, your message should be about the product, and what it can do. If you are dealing with visionaries, the messaging is more about massive improvements. When dealing with pragmatics, you want to talk about experience, the stability of the company, and the proven track record of helping customers. Lastly, when dealing with conservatives you must either have the leading product, or a good message about how you can enhance the solutions they already own.

Example 2: Selling “Conservative” to a Visionary Doesn’t Work Here is an example of messaging from the other side of the equation. Early in my sales career I worked for Cisco Systems. If you are not in IT and do not know Cisco, they own 80% market share in computer networking. “No one ever got fired for buying Cisco.” Their message was something like this: We have proven products.We have a huge R&D staff to keep ahead of the technology demands.We have 10,000 certified engineers.We have done proof of concepts with every technology on the market. Due to the volume of product we produce, we can offer competitive pricing. How can you lose a deal with all this behind you? I did, and it was a large one. I had better pricing, a good relationship, and I listened to the business requirements. I actually helped the customer during the business planning. Plus, my product was more flexible than the competitors’. There was actually

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Chapter 9 | Niche Selling an investment protection program in place in case the technology changed. My competitor was shrinking, losing massive market share, and their R&D ranks were decimated. (Here is a quote from my customer about my competitor, “The one engineer who is working on this product has promised me he is staying with the company.”) What’s more, they were slightly more expensive. How then did I lose the deal? Let me give you a bit of background on the prospective company and this person, and you tell me. • This prospect was going to offer insurance through kiosks at a major retailer. They were the first company to deliver insurance in this manner. • The owner of the company was young, and the company was growing almost too fast. • The CIO, my main contact, was promoted from within. Just a few years before this, he was made head of computing because he knew how to operate both Apple- and Windows-based computers. Within four years, he was in charge of building out a 4,000-node network worth millions of dollars. • The CIO liked to jump out of planes and scuba dive on weekends. Why did I lose? My approach was aimed at a conservative, but my buyer was a risk taker. The entire company was visionary. My competition played to the risk taker, the new technology, and the up-and-coming company (even though it was dying), and they assured him he could have access to the single design engineer. They risked their success on one person. Getting back to theory, Moore’s contribution to this model is the introduction of a break in the adoption model. There is a challenge between the visionary and the pragmatic, or the chasm. The pragmatics and decision makers of the company require references and referrals. These referrals can either be internal or external to the company. The problem is that early adopters of the technologies, the techies and visionaries, are not considered good references. The pragmatics view them as flakey, and their opinions are not valid. The answer to this dilemma is niche marketing. For the purposes of this book, I call it niche selling. Niche selling is addressing a customer’s need that is not addressed by a current vendor. Alternatively, you may have a product that addresses a specific need that does not involve much risk or investment. Niche selling is a powerful strategy for a new salesperson. You need to find a unique offering in your product or service line that your competition does not address.

Trust-Based Selling Looking back at Tom’s example, what did management do up front? They trained him on their big ticket, best-selling items, and their most competitive product set. Tom’s challenge was manifold: • Technology that is hard to replace at the customer. • Dozens of other competitors in that market. • Incumbents who have the customer’s trust.  Tom would have been better suited if he were trained on products or services that were new to the market, or unique to the vendor. Your goal should be to sell to a customer base where there is not an incumbent.

Trust in Niche Selling When you’re competing against a trusted competitor, you are looking to build your trust and find a weakness in the competitor’s trust equation. If you lead with a niche product or service, you have a capability that is unique. You may not have demonstrated the capabilities or results yet. But since you are dealing in an area in which the incumbent cannot offer a solution, their trust meter for that specific solution is diminished. For that solution, the incumbent still has proved they are dedicated to the customer, and have good intention, but they do not have the capability or results for that solution. Always start by assuming the incumbent is fully trusted. So in this case, the incumbent trust meter moves to this level, as shown in Figure 9-2.

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Figure 9-2.  Lower incumbent trust due to lack of product offering in a needed area

When you are actually competing with an incumbent who did not bring unique values to the forefront, trust in the incumbent is degraded some. This comes in the form of showing a customer a new way to use their existing products, or solutions, that they did not think of. The incumbent can be hurt in the dedication and possibly intent elements. The incumbent is assuming that business will flow their way, and their approach to helping the customer comes into question (Figure 9-3).

Figure 9-3.  Lowering incumbent trust due to less than stellar customer service

You lowered the competition’s trust profile without once being negative toward your competition. All you did was present an area where they are not capable. During half time of a football game, the teams go to their locker rooms and you reevaluate the game plan. The first place you look is where you are having success, or where you can exploit a known weakness in the opposing team. If you are drawing up a play on the whiteboard, you would first attack the weakest link in the defensive line. Look at attacking the incumbent the same; where are they weakest? The defensive line for the incumbent looks like Figure 9-4.

Trust-Based Selling

Figure 9-4.  Relative trust strength of incumbent vs. non-niche and niche products

If you have limited trust at the beginning of the sales cycle, your best play is moving toward the right of the line. Going head-to-head against a competitor with similar products is your toughest route. Even if you believe you have a solution with some better capability, you can see your situation does not improve much. The next trust meter shows a situation where you introduce a solution to a customer; a solution a competitor has, but has not discussed with the customer. The first niche trust meter shows a niche product that may replace, complement, augment, or possibly change a competitor’s solution. The last situation is by far the best. You find a new product that is important to the customer, and they have no incumbent in that area. You are competing on a completely level playing field, or, ideally, you are the only team on the field.

Why Niche Selling Is Effective Selling where there is an incumbent vendor shrinks your window of opportunity. Using the 48-month purchase cycle mentioned before, you might hit the window perfectly within the four-month sales cycle, but probably not given the 8% chance of hitting it. In reality, if they have a vendor for this type or purchase, your window is much smaller. If you happen to catch your competition sleeping, and can define the solution for the customer, your true window is maybe one month, or a 2% chance. If you hit the window perfectly despite the odds, you have an 80% chance of becoming the vendor they use just to keep the other vendor honest. Now look at niche selling. You understand the customer issues around which you will position your product. You understand that being new, you need to establish trust, so your first deals might be smaller. When you position a new need to the customer, you create an entirely new purchasing cycle because

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Chapter 9 | Niche Selling this is a new concept. There is no incumbent. Your chance of engaging in a conversation that is open minded, not clouded by competition, is 100%. This method eliminates the window-of-opportunity concept. There is no cyclical purchase established for this particular product. You eliminate the need for perfect timing and lower the influence of competition. If your competition does offer the same solution, you put your competition in a defensive position with the customer. “Why didn’t you tell me about this new product/service/ technology?”

Example: Putting Niche Selling to the Test Let’s take a look at this strategy in a company’s effort to bring a new technology into its portfolio. A reseller entered into a new contract to sell a large manufacturer’s products and services. This manufacturer had a very broad portfolio in the IT industry, including servers, storage, networking, management software, and back-office software. Each of these product areas was supported by separate divisions of the manufacturer. They pretty much had everything you needed to run an IT shop. Yet the reseller was struggling in its first six months of engagement with this manufacturer. When we consulted with the reseller, we started by asking how they had engaged, what they had been trained on, who they had relationships with at the manufacturer, and so forth. Then we analyzed their pipeline. Eight months into this new relationship, the sales teams across the reseller’s five regions have done account mapping, training, and some joint sales calls with the manufacturer’s server and storage teams. Servers and storage in this industry are highly competitive—in fact, the most competitive. Products are almost commoditized in these markets. Moreover, the products tend to be in sensitive parts of their customers’ businesses, making them technically hard to replace. They are also on long purchase cycles, meaning that only a small percentage of their customer base is in the market at any one time. The reseller also faces competition from other resellers who also sell this manufacturer’s products. They cannot simply position better features of the product. With these larger purchases, the sale teams were most likely competing against a seasoned sales professional who “owned” the customer relationship. Even when the customers are “in the market,” they typically stay with incumbent technology. Across five regions, they had 25 salespeople, and after eight months, they had a total of 10 deals in the forecast. The total revenue in the forecast was $1.7 million. We did not even bother to qualify the forecast based on their relative trust strength against the incumbent.

Trust-Based Selling Our next step in the consulting process was to bring together the sales leaders from each organization. We asked the manufacturer to briefly review their product portfolio. We were able to identify a niche product that could be sold to a few different titles within an organization. We then looked back at the forecast and saw that two of the ten opportunities were with this product; this was without any focus on this niche product. We chose two regions at the reseller to roll out this strategy. 1. First, the reseller trained the sales teams on this niche product. Training was focused, and not scattered across the entire product portfolio. There was a simple story that both junior and senior salespeople could grasp. 2. They developed a marketing program that would bring customers to lunch-and-learn events. The promotion of the lunch-and-learn was focused on the issues customers face that this product solved. They did not focus on the product. With this focus, the sales and marketing teams were able to drive great attendance to the events. Over 50% of the attendees were net new clients to the reseller or the manufacturer. This is the power of focusing on issues that customers face. 3. After the lunch-and-learns, follow-up sales calls were conducted with the attendees. The results were impressive. Remember, they conducted the events in only two of the five regions. In 37% of the time, 3 months versus 8 months, the company grew the number of opportunities 240%, from 10 to 24. The revenue in the forecast grew from $1.7M to $4.4M. 75% of these deals were in a “confident” stage. The interesting part of the scenario is that the niche product opportunities went from 2 to 7. That means the other opportunities, in the larger volume categories, increased from 8 to 17. The goal of the niche was to gain access to the customer and then have broader conversations, and that is exactly what happened. With these results, the manufacturer stepped up and paid for marketing events in the other regions. The other divisions of the manufacturer saw these results and were willing to put in money for marketing events, even though the niche product was outside their division. Niche selling works because it gives every advantage to penetrating a new account. First, it increases the rep’s chance to gain access to a customer. Next, it reduces the chances the rep will be going head to head against an experienced, incumbent competitor. Last, if you have a large product portfolio, it allows your company to focus training for new salespeople, and it gives a specific focal point for marketing to assist the sales team.

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Summary In this chapter, I assumed that you have a choice in products or services. If you do, pick something unique. If you do not have a choice, hopefully your offering is unique. If your offering is not unique, try to find a unique application of the product or service that has not yet been discussed with the customer. If it is not unique, at a minimum make sure your messaging is in line with your buyer’s adoption personality, or job title. The power of this strategy is that it does not require one ounce of sales training, or sales skills improvement. It can be done in a conference room with management. And, you can get the entire organization focused on supporting penetration of new accounts. It’s a matter of simple physics. If you can apply the same amount of force in a smaller area, you generate much more pressure. If you push on a piece of paper with your hand using 20 pounds of force, nothing really happens. Now take that same 20 pounds of force, and focus it on the tiny area of a pencil tip. You will punch right through it. If you use marketing, events, cold calling, and training all focused on one niche product, you get the maximum pressure in penetrating new accounts. Now that you are prepared to engage with the customer with a proper online presence, sales training, product training, an effective elevator hook, and you have picked a solution to lead with, we have one more element of trust to discuss which is slightly outside of business. The most trusted people are people with power or authority. Most sales people—the bottom 80%—give up too much personal power the moment they walk in the door. We will explore that in the next chapter.

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10 Power in Sales Don’t Give It Away Wherever there is a man who exercises authority, there is a man who will follow it. —Unknown There is sure fire way to cut your sales in half with the very first sentence out of your mouth. I’ll get to that in a moment. But first let me say that I included this chapter because there are a few simple behaviors that you might not be aware of that can sabotage your results. And there are, likewise, a few things you can do to multiply your results. Power, or authority, is required if you want to join the ranks of the best salespeople. The salespeople who take control of the sales cycle are most likely to win any given deal. There are many reasons this is true. In Chapter 5, “Trust,” for example, you learned about the elements of trust. Each of those elements leads to a position of power over the customer. There’s more. Whenever you meet with customers, you should adopt a mentality that you are the most powerful person in the room. After all, you are there to help, educate, and ultimately allow the customer to execute the company’s business more efficiently. You bring insight from the entire industry, as well as insight from other customers who have dealt with similar situations. Your customers not only respond to the power you bring, but they crave it. The last thing you want to be is a burden to your customer; instead, be someone they want to hear from. That someone has power and isn’t afraid to use it.

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Killing Power with One Line It is amazing how many salespeople do not take pride in their sales careers. You can spot them within the first five seconds of a meeting, because they start with something like: • “I am just the sales guy.” • “My job is to bring the smart people into the room.” • “I am just the guy who buys lunch.” • “I will be your cruise director during this meeting.” • “Don’t pay attention to me; I am only the salesperson.” • “Let me stop and let the smart people talk.” • “I am just a facilitator.” • “I am just the person who schedules the resources.” These type of behaviors are even more prevalent in technical sales, where salespeople work with a team of product experts. It is okay to let your customer know that, for the technical details, you will defer to the technical experts. But, do not downplay your value in a wholesale way with sweeping statements like those. You must think of yourself as a doctor. You are there to help diagnose issues and solve problems. How would you feel if your doctor walked into the room and said, “I am not an expert in this, but let’s get started.”? The doctor may not be a specialist in cardiology for example, but he can still listen to the heart and recommend that the patient see a specialist after the exam. However, if he starts with, “I am not a specialist,” then the patient will think, “Then why are you even listening to my heart?” The same holds true for salespeople. It is okay not to be a technical expert. However, everything you sell should bring business value. You are the business expert in the room, so project that confidence.

Your Time Is Important Making the best use of your time is an important mantra for you to practice from day one. It is also important that your customer sees that your time is important. Powerful people have busy schedules. If you allow yourself to let your customers dictate your schedule, your customers will sense that you do not have power. Statements like, “I am open all next week,” “I will rearrange my schedule to accommodate you,” and “Pick a time, I will make it work” are all examples of how a simple statement can diminish your power,

Trust-Based Selling thus reducing the trust your customer has. When scheduling, be specific about your available times. “I have an opening on Friday at 10:00, or next Wednesday at 1:30.” Even if your calendar is wide open, show your customer that your time is valuable. It will help you set a precedent with your customer that you are important, and that your time is precious. If they sense your time is free, the customer will be more apt to make you jump through hoops. “We need this,” “Can you be here next week?,” “We have a an urgent request,” or “We need you here tomorrow!” Once you start falling into these traps, they are hard to get out of. Once customers start giving you hoops to jump through, you know they either don’t respect your power, or are testing it.

Example I had just hired Kevin, whom I had known for years. I was more than happy to have him on my team. He was very well respected, and had a proven track record, as he has been in our industry for over 20 years. We were meeting with a junior engineer barely out of college. We entered our names on the sign-in sheet that every customer has, got our badges, and sat down to wait for the person to come escort us to the meeting room. We reviewed our objectives for the call one more time. I was impressed with the agenda Kevin had for the meeting. Everything was looking professional, and I was feeling more confident in my decision to hire him. My only concern was this was a pretty low-level engineer we were about to meet. A few minutes passed, and the junior engineer came out to greet us. I extended my hand and said, “It’s nice to meet you; I am Dave.” Kevin extended his hand and said with a sweet-as-molasses tone, “I am Kevin, and thank you so much for your time; thank you.” As we walked down the hallway toward the meeting room, there was some idle conversation, and Kevin slipped in another, “Thank you so much for meeting us.” We arrived at the meeting room, and as we sat down, Kevin again said, “Thank you;Thank you for your time.” I was glaring at Kevin trying to will him to stop! I teased Kevin for years about this, because I wanted him to stop this way-toonice behavior. He was giving up all his power to an administrative engineer. What I wanted to convey was that a salesperson’s time is more important than a customer’s. Most of your customers are getting paid whether they sit there or not. You get paid for what you sell. You could be in front of more important people, making more money. Your time is valuable. Respect your customer’s time, but don’t put it on a pedestal. Your time is actually more valuable, because you get paid only for performance.

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Jumping Through Hoops Again, you must show that your time is important. You need to convey that you are willing to help your customers, but they have to put as much skin in the game as you do. Do not blindly jump through hoops. Especially be aware of hoops that are meant to blow you off, like the “Please send me some literature” hoop. I believe that sales is a profession in which you help and educate customers. This does not mean being subservient. Your customers will request administrative items from you, such as proofs of concept, new quotes, more quotes, and answers to RFPs. Sometimes customers don’t know the effort some of these tasks require. It is okay to push back some and to ask for clarification as to why they are requesting something from you. It is also okay to negotiate with the customer. Give into the request reluctantly, and for something in return. At a minimum, put the task on your timetable. If you have been in sales long enough, you will recognize the salesperson who runs around like a chicken with its head cut off. “I need to get this quote to the customer yesterday, and you need to drop everything you are doing to help me.” This is a salesperson who is not in control of the sales cycle; they have given up all their power to the customer. Do not assume your customers need everything immediately. It is okay to tell the customer that her request will take a certain amount of time. Set the expectation that your time is important.

Summary There are many techniques for establishing power with customers, including the way you hold your hands, how you enter a room, how you stand, how you shake hands, and so on. This chapter was not about techniques you can use to project power. The point here was to point out simple mistakes that many salespeople make that are very easy to avoid. You are working hard to establish trust with your customer, so do not let your power wane with seemingly harmless statements. I am not asking you to change your personality or use gimmicks to get power, but just be aware of the self-worth you project to your customers. You are two-thirds the way through the book, and finally you get to meet with the customer in the next chapter. I will cover some “selling skills and strategies,” and discuss a small shift in focus from opportunity qualification to qualifying the customer as someone with the potential to become a long-term buyer of your products or services.

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11 Selling Strategies Sales 101 People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. —John C. Maxwell No matter how much strategy you have, you still must be able to pull the trigger and execute. Selling skills are your number one tool in developing the element of trust. Like with many things, selling skills are not the only thing you need, but without them you face an uphill challenge. Selling is simple. Listen to the customer. Ask questions. Push the focus back on the customer at all times. If every salesperson could do these simple tasks, it would put every sales author and trainer out of business. Why are questions so important? You ask questions for two reasons. • They enable you to dive into the heart of the issue. You can expand the issue to the point where the customer says, “I have to fix this problem.” • They show that you care. As John Maxwell said, “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” This is the quote at the beginning of the chapter, but it is worth repeating. Showing you care will win you more trust than any strategy you employ. Without proper intent from the beginning, you will have difficulty advancing the sales cycle.

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Chapter 11 | Selling Strategies I just saved you hundreds of dollars on sales books. It really is that simple. The problem is that for most people, the 80% crowd, this is hard to do. I am no exception. I teach sales skills, yet I still have to constantly remind myself, “Shut up, focus back on the customer, and don’t talk so much about what my products or service can do.” I like to hear myself talk, but I am at least to the point where I am aware when I am boring a customer.

Questions! I was just reading an article that said questions are becoming a passé concept as a sales tool; conversations are the way to go. I agree that conversations are most important. However, questions are the tool of choice to guide conversations. The easiest way to start a conversation or keep a conversation going is with questions. I think the article was referring to the old questions like, “What keeps you up at night?,” “What’s the stone in your shoe?,” or “If you could fix one thing, what would it be?” I believe canned questions like these are past their prime. First, everyone uses them, so they sound insincere. Second, you have not earned the trust to ask personal questions yet. No one is going to dump their troubles, business or personal, on someone they have no trust in. This chapter helps you better understand why questions are important, why you need to build toward tougher questions, and how to use questions effectively so you become a conversationalist without sounding like an interrogator. Overused word alert: I will use the word “question” in some form 95 times in this chapter. (I counted.) I overuse the word to drive home the importance of questions.

Example Why is something as simple as asking questions so hard for salespeople? For 80% of salespeople, their comfort zone is in talking about their products. I see it with new salespeople, regional managers, and VPs of sales; they like to talk about what they can do for the customer. They like to talk about their products, their company, and themselves. I could share with you several stories about bad sales behavior, or salespeople with long monologues, but this example best exemplifies the challenge of staying focused on the customer and asking questions.

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Trust-Based Selling I have had the chance to interview many sales candidates over the years. During the interview, I spend half the time on an exercise with the candidate. My goal is to determine if they can keep asking questions. From the quality of their questions, I can get a great sense of how technical or business savvy they are. Here is how I set up the role-play. This is not a sales call. You have a customer who has just awarded you a deal to help them implement a project. I will play the customer, and all I want you to do is ask me questions about the project. I want you to understand the business goals, the technical environment, the timelines of the project, and the technical objectives. Understand the timeframes, budgets, and how this project affects the business. Again, just find out as much as you can about this project. Do not sell to me. Listen to my answers; they will help you form your next question. I have set them up to exhibit the proper sales behavior, asking questions. I even tell them the exact information they need to get from me. In the interview, there are a few check boxes I am looking for. • Does the candidate keep asking questions? • Are they asking business questions? • Are they asking technical questions? • Are they asking personal or pain questions? • What caliber of questions do they ask? • What depth of knowledge is demonstrated? • Are they carrying on a conversation? The results are typical. Nearly 80% of the time, the candidates ask two, maybe three, questions, and then start making statements about how they can help. They think since it’s a sales interview that they need to sell. What I want to see is proper selling behavior, which consists of asking questions. When they start selling, I think, “They just stopped selling. Now I am getting a monologue.” I stop them, and tell them once again, “Just ask questions to understand this project.” Still, 80%–90% of candidates find an opening in the conversation to deliver a monologue. The true indication of the depth of the problem is the fact that these candidates are making up their monologue. They know very little about what the company does, but they proceed to “wing it” and make up value propositions on the fly. As stated, selling is simple, but hard for most salespeople to execute. I believe the disconnection lies in how each person’s selling style is ingrained in their personality, which is difficult to change.

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Chapter 11 | Selling Strategies What is easy to change is strategy. Strategy can be done with management, in the car, in the parking lot, and in a conference room. When strategizing, you do not have the pressure of the customer in front of you. There are no repercussions for missteps. Setting a strategy is easy. The proper strategy will keep you aligned with the skills you need to employ. You cannot execute the strategies in this book without asking questions. Questions force you to exhibit the proper skills. And the answers to your questions can be used to further refine your sales strategy and make it more effective. Even if you ignore the advice of building trust before you enter into an opportunity cycle, you cannot learn about the opportunity without asking questions. How else will you learn these elements in the sales equation? CE x V x P x DP x (D+I+C+R)2 = Sale • Pain/compelling event (CE) • Value/budget (V) • Access to power (P) • Decision/purchase process (DP) • Your relative trust strength (D+I+C+R)2 No matter how smart you are, or how well you position your products, you cannot qualify the customer or the opportunity without asking the right questions. Using the hunter analogy, your skills are your ability to aim and shoot. Questions are your gun. Questions are your sales weapon of choice. When asking questions, you give the customer a chance to talk. This is a conversation. No matter how well you think a sales call went, the next time you get out of an appointment, stop and think, “Who did all the talking?” In your first few encounters with new customers, your focus should be on raising trust levels. This is as easy as asking questions. Ask questions; ask questions. Why? Intent. If you stay focused on the customers by asking them in detail about their issues, you show that you care about them. They may even forget they are in a sales meeting. Results. This one is hard to earn from the beginning. However, you must ask questions about their goals. Understand where they are, and where they want to be. Have them tell you what a successful solution looks like. Dedication. In the early stages of the sales/buyer relationship, your dedication is closely tied to your intent in the customer’s mind. Capability. You are better off showing capability through intelligent questions rather than telling what you can do for them.

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Trust-Based Selling I was once in your shoes and wanted to prove that, even though I was a “sales guy,” I could hang with the customer’s engineers. I could, but it took me 10 years to realize that the engineers dismissed what I was saying, just because I was the salesperson. I was not doing myself any favors. I eventually learned that the quality of my questions could demonstrate my capabilities. I now have a goal with every sales call: to hear the words, “great question.” The more “great question” responses I get, the more comfortable the customer is about my abilities. As trust grows, they open up even more.

ASK TOUGH QUESTIONS The tough questions you are afraid to ask are the most professional ones. Questions about the decision process, budgets, time frames, goals, how the business is affected if they don’t do something, or the advantage the customer will have if they do move forward, will show you are the business consultant they are looking for. The interview process I described earlier in this chapter had this very goal—to determine the quality of questions asked by the interviewee. I wanted to know if they asked technical, project, or business-related questions. I wanted to know how detailed, or how in depth they could go in any one subject. Your customers want to know the same things. You will impress them with great—and sometimes difficult—questions, and you will annoy them with the answers you provide unsolicited.

A Study on A large manufacturing company noticed a trend with their sales teams. After two years in a sales position, most salespeople started to lose momentum. Morale would decrease, and their sales results would diminish to the point of disrepair. (See Figure 11-1).

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Figure 11-1.  Declining sales performance over time

The two curves show morale and productivity. When starting in a new territory, you are working hard, and you are probably insecure because you do not know your customer, market, or products very well. However, as you gain experience, your morale and performance pick up. At about the two-year mark, your morale and performance are at an all-time high. So why does the curve start to go down at that point? This seems like a huge contradiction. It’s called the “double E effect.” Experience and enthusiasm kill sales. Wait! You probably have read some place that one of the key qualities of any salesperson is passion. Isn’t enthusiasm another word for passion? Why would experience play a role in causing sales to decline? The answer is simple. Once a salesperson masters her product or services, she stops asking questions. She is now an expert in what she is selling. She has great intent and has helped many customers produce results. She is eager (enthusiastic) to help the next customer. With the two Es, she starts telling the customers how she can help. She stops asking questions! Think about an uncomfortable conversation, or an early sales call, where you knew little about the product. Your defense mechanism was to ask questions and get your customer to talk, which is great selling. It is simple to see from the outside looking in, but hard to recognize when you are actually on the sales side of the call.

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Example During sales training, I do an exercise where I ask one of the participants in the class to role-play with me. This kind of role-play demonstrates behavior, rather than sales training-type role-play that is meant to ingrain specific memorized wordings. The first thing I do is put the salesperson on a sales call where they know nothing about their product. The example I use is a vacuum salesperson (I like the stereotype) going to a potential customer’s home. It’s this person’s first day on the job and he was going only to observe the senior salesperson. The new person shows up in the driveway and is waiting for his partner. The phone rings. The partner is stuck in traffic, “You have to cover this call for me.” Since the participants know very little about vacuums, they are typically very nervous, so I tell them to just ask me questions. They hesitate, thinking of questions, and then they come out. Why did you agree to an appointment today? What is your old vacuum? How does it work? Is there anything you don’t like about it? Are there features you wish it had? How often do you vacuum? Do you have kids or pets? Questions, plain and simple. The participant looks very awkward. So I let them off the hook. I say, “Great job. I know you are nervous. Let me make it easier on you. Let’s role-play a sales call within your industry.” You see the person’s mood and morale instantly improve. They are back in their comfort zone. Jeff, the participant in this case, is eager to get another try, this time with a product he knows something about. I say, “Jeff, welcome; thank you for coming in, we would like to talk about x today.” Jeff starts with some pleasantries. Then he asks a couple of questions about what the customer would like to hear about. Then Jeff starts to “sell.” He says how great the company is; how their product is better and why. On and on. After teaching on my feet all morning, I feel like letting him go on all afternoon, so I can rest. However, I am nice and I cut him off after three minutes or so. “Good job Jeff; please take a seat.” Jeff proudly walks back to his seat, since he just did a great job selling. He did do a great job selling, but it’s not in the scenario he thinks. I poll the class, “Which was a better sales call?” Almost unanimously, the class votes for the vacuum sales call. Everyone can see that the call was smoother, the customer was more engaged in answering questions, and Jeff got a ton of information from the customer.  When you are in the middle of the “sale,” you need to be an outside observer, like the class, and start to be aware of what’s going on. Are you sounding like a bore? Is the customer engaged? Are you asking questions?

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Chapter 11 | Selling Strategies Objectively, when I look back at people I have worked with, or for, one great salesperson stands out in my mind. At the time I thought he was average, but over time, I gained new respect for his abilities. I wish he had taught me more. I was a beginner who was slowly becoming an expert, and he was an expert. I liked to prove I was as smart as the engineers, so I talked about products. I had the answers to the customer’s problem; I had quick answers to their questions. He acted like he didn’t know a thing. He would just ask simple questions that I knew he knew the answers to. I would ask him, “Why are you asking so many simple questions?” He would just smile. I didn’t get it 20 years ago, but today I do. He did not let his enthusiasm and experience stop him from asking questions. He was an expert acting like a beginner. He was a professional.

Example Let’s go back to Susan from Chapter 2, the woman who had access to 20 CIOs in her territory. When we analyzed what was going on, we realized the weak link was the sales manager. She had an enthusiastic sales manager who was overjoyed with the fact that Susan had C-level access at 20 accounts. In the first three months of her being on board, Susan introduced her boss to each of her previous customers. After six months, there were no measurable results in Susan’s territory. At the quarterly business review, the VP of sales analyzes the situation. The VP asks the regional manager, “So, how are things going?” He replies, “Great. It’s just a matter of time before we can take advantage of Susan’s relationships.” VP: “What activity has occurred?” The enthusiastic regional manager: “It’s been awesome. Susan has brought us into about 20 accounts, at the C-Level. We’ve had the chance to tell our story to 20 new customers!” The VP’s response was not so enthusiastic: “What the [****] do you mean?” Confused, the regional manager asks: “What do you mean?” Ignoring the question, the VP suggests, “Let’s go down the list of these ­customers and understand what next steps we have with each. I want to know what issues they have. Customer number one, what are their main initiatives for the year?” Silence.

Trust-Based Selling “Customer number 2, what are their main initiatives for the year?” Silence. VP: “You told our story? How long did you take in telling our story?” Regional manager: “Well you know our slide deck, 30 minutes or so.” VP: “Did you bother asking the customer anything about their business?” Regional manager: “In most cases with the C-level they only had 45 minutes. So, we didn’t have much time for that.” VP: “[****]!” This is typical. The regional manager was excited to have Susan’s access to the C-level contacts and took for granted her relationship with the customer. He thought with her relationship, all he needed to do was tell the customer how great her new company was and orders would flow in. What happened? • He forgot sales 101, which is to ask questions. • He forgot about the incumbent. • He forgot about qualifying the customer. • He bored the customers. The customers dismissed the new vendor, because Susan and the regional manager did not take time to establish a trusting relationship. They did not show intent by taking the time to ask about their customer issues. Susan didn’t improve upon the trust she had built through her previous job, and she underestimated the trust the incumbent had built. She lost these sales as a result.

Questioning Skills Here are the basics for questioning prospects. • Listening will help you develop your best questions. • Focus on the basics—who, what, where, why, and how (how many, how much), • Asking “why” three times will lead to the real reason the customer has discussed an issue. Let’s consider each of these points in detail.

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Listening The number one mistake you see with sales reps who are trying to question is that they do not listen to the answers. They ask a question, wait for the answer, and then move on to the next question on the list. The best questions feed off the customer’s responses. In sales, questions are your weapon. In hunting, your rifle is your weapon. The best sharpshooters in the word have an extra set of eyes on the target; they have spotters. The spotters tell the shooter where to aim. The shooter fires one round, and the spotter tells the shooter, “ You were down six inches to the left.” The shooter adjusts the weapon, or the scope on the weapon, to accommodate for the errant shot. The same goes with questions. Look for feedback from the customer in the form of their answers. Your next question should build off their answer, and probe for deeper understanding.

Sounding Like an Expert with Basic Questions So the first principle is to listen and feed off the answers. How do you do this? Use the basic questions—who, where, what, when, why, and how. These questions will make you seem like an expert on any subject. In the earlier example, Jeff was in front of the class asking questions to his potential vacuum customer. He must ask questions out of necessity. I call Jeff back to the front of the room and give him the instructions to listen to my answers and then follow up with the what, who, how many, and why questions. Here is how the conversation goes. Jeff rings the doorbell and I welcome him in. Jeff:  “I understand you are in the market for a vacuum?” Customer:  “Yes I am.” Jeff:  “Why are you looking for a new vacuum?” Customer:  “Well, I don’t think the one we have works all that well.” Jeff:  “What doesn’t work well? Is there a function you are looking for, or are your floors not as clean as you would like?” Customer:  “A little of both. I think my current vacuum is heavy, and it’s hard getting the stairs clean. But mainly, the carpets don’t look as good as they used to.” Jeff:  “Can you show me the stairs? Where are they dirty?” Customer:  “See the edges and corners? I don’t have an attachment for those.”

Trust-Based Selling Jeff: “So, it’s heavy and doesn’t have some features? How often do you vacuum the stairs?” Customer: “I vacuum all the time. My kids are always dragging in grass clippings.” Jeff: “How many kids do you have?” This can go on forever, but you can see that this is a much smoother conversation. He asked how, what, who, and why questions. He listened and molded his next question based on the customer’s answers. Does Jeff know anything more about vacuums than he did 10 minutes before, when he was up in front of the class? No. But with some guidelines, he comes across as confident and knowledgeable. And, by asking deeper questions, he shows he cares. The trust is building. Luckily for Jeff, he knew nothing about the vacuum he was selling. If he had, he would have had the urge to start talking about the company’s new “Featherweight Series,” or something like that. Fight the urge to start talking about the solution right when the customer opens the door, and keep on feeding off their answers.  You can use the questioning method anywhere—in sales or even at parties. You will be amazed at the conversations you can hold without knowing a thing about a topic.

Get to the Heart of the Matter If you ask “why” three times, you will get to the heart of the matter. You will get to the real reason that someone wants to make a change, fix a problem, or buy something new. Looking back at the vacuum scenario, the conversation could just as easily gone like this. Jeff: “I understand you are in the market for a vacuum?” Customer: “Yes I am.” Jeff: “Why are you looking for a new vacuum?” Customer: “Well, I don’t think the one we have works all that well.” Jeff: “Why do you say that? Is there a function you are looking for, or are you floors not as clean as you like?” Customer: “A little of both. I think my current vacuum is heavy; it’s hard getting the stairs clean. But, mainly the carpets don’t look as good as they used to.” Jeff: “Can you show me what you mean?” Customer: “See this area? It doesn’t look like stain; it just seems dirty.”

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Chapter 11 | Selling Strategies Jeff:  “It doesn’t seem too bad; why does it bother you?” Customer:  “My mother in-law had fun pointing that out.” Jeff, smiling:  “Mother in-law? Is she here often?” Customer:  “Too often; I always feel my house has to be spotless.” These questions are not exactly why, why, why, but variations of “why” are woven through each question. The real reason this customer wants a new vacuum is to impress her mother in-law. This is a much more powerful motivator than a dirty carpet. This applies even more so to B2B sales. I have talked about how each title within a company has different goals. It is critical that you determine the real reason why someone is contemplating working on a new project or purchasing something new. Let me clue you in. Most people do not want to work harder. They want their lives to be easier. So the real reason they are willing to make a change has to be personal. Asking “why” three times will get you to the personal reason. Once you figure out the personal reason, your trust score goes through the roof. Your intentions become about helping them personally. The results you will show have an impact on their life or their career. Salesperson:  “So Bob, you are looking at buying some more storage; why?” Bob:  “The current system does not have the horsepower we are looking for.” Salesperson:  “Horsepower, meaning . . .?” Bob:  “Recently, we changed the backup of our major systems over from tape to our storage system. That was supposed to improve performance.” Salesperson:  “Supposed to?” Bob:  “Yes, it helped a little, but our backups are still taking hours.” Salesperson:  “Why is that a problem?” Bob:  “I am not allowed to leave work until the backups are completed.” Salesperson:  “Wow, that’s a bummer. How late have you been staying lately?” Bob:  “Well, I can’t play in our softball league anymore.” The reason Bob wants a new storage system is because he wants to play softball!!! Nowhere in any cost justification, or ROI presentation, will it ever mention softball. But now that you know why Bob wants it so bad, you have an ally.

Trust-Based Selling However, Bob’s boss will have a whole different reason why she wants new storage. Salesperson:  “Bob tells me you are looking at some new storage.” Karen:  “Yes, our backups are not running as fast as we would like.” Salesperson:  “Why does this bother you—is it causing a problem?” Karen:  “About a month ago, a large database was corrupted, and Finance was unable to run an end-of-quarter report. They were late in getting their quarterly earnings report to the CEO.” Salesperson:  “How will faster backups help with that?” Karen:  “It didn’t have any direct effect, but it put a spotlight on our slow backup process.” Salesperson:  “Are tasked with solving this issue?” Karen:  “Yes, my next quarter MBOs are all based on this project.” By asking Susan enough questions, you finally get the real reason that Bob’s boss wants new storage; she is financially incented.

Summary Remember the true reasons for asking questions: • To uncover enough information about the situation to the point the customer is saying to themselves, “We have to fix this issue.” • To show that you care. Questions, questions, questions. You can see how customers will open up to questions. If you want to sum up sales skills, think questions, questions, questions. You can’t hunt without a gun. You can’t sell without asking questions. Even though this book is about strategy that anyone can use regardless of skill level, it’s important to include on chapter about sales skills. To change your personality is a long process. The process starts with awareness. Be aware of the conversations you have with customers. After each sales call, ask yourself who did all the talking. With this crash course in selling, you are now in a position to ask ­questions and listen to the customer. It is now that you start truly executing your strategy.

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12 Building Trust Before Opportunity As you go to work, your top responsibility should be to build trust. —Robert Eckert The most important strategy discussed so far has been to focus on the customer relationship rather than on the immediate opportunity. This point was driven home with information about improving sales skills, managing opportunities, avoiding becoming column fodder, and handling leads well. You have spent time qualifying and ranking your customers, so now you need to develop their trust. However, what do you do when you are not completely focused on an opportunity?

Why You Can Win an Incumbent’s Business Assume you qualified the customer and you have established some trust with them. You received a warm introduction and you have successfully shown intent by staying focused on them. Your intent is solid, while your capability, dedication, and results are at best, warm. Your trust meter looks like Figure 12-1.

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Figure 12-1.  Example of building trust before engaging an opportunity

In the trust-ranking system, you have a score of five, but you need at least a six to compete with a fully trusted incumbent. You need to work on capability, dedication, and results. I want to remind you that it’s likely that you’re building a trust meter that is actually stronger than the incumbent’s. In the incumbent’s ideal world, the meter is full, but in reality they have probably taken their customer for granted (Figure 12-2). You

Level of Interest in Relationship

Relationship Gap

Customer Incumbent Initial Contact

First Sale

Figure 12-2.  Incumbent not maintaining trust with customer

Trust-Based Selling The smart incumbent realizes that the relationship after the sale is important to the customer, and that selling to an existing customer is much easier than finding new ones. However, this graph shows that the typical salesperson moves on to new opportunities after the sale. I guarantee that your focus on bringing value to the customer will be rewarded once an opportunity is presented. These elements are easy to change when given a chance. However, your customer has been conditioned over the years to engage with salespeople within the confines of a project. You need to be creative in demonstrating dedication, capability, results, and intent without the benefit of a “natural” sales cycle.

Methods to Increase Trust The ideas shared in this chapter are only suggestions for actions you can take to improve business relationships. These ideas go beyond, “Can I take you to lunch?” or “Would you like to play golf?” While you can develop a friendly relationship with the customer in order to win their business, you must also establish business trust. The primary strategy is to stay in front of your customer while offering value. If you focus on product presentations or just grill the customer for information over and over, they will stop seeing value in your interactions, and your ability to secure future appointments will dwindle. In everything you do with a customer, you must make sure you are adding business value. The most powerful tools you have are information and concern. You want to keep your customers educated about your solutions, new trends in the industry, news articles, or information that will help them with their careers. The more you understand your customer from the beginning, the more focused the information can be to that customer. The information must complement their concerns. Sharing information can demonstrate your capability. Capability is established with industry knowledge more so than with product knowledge. Customers are always curious about the latest industry trends.

Phone Call with Follow-Up E-Mail This one is simple. As you are maintaining your industry knowledge, you will come across information that your customer will benefit from knowing. Call your customer and leave a simple voicemail. “I came across an article today I thought you would be interested in. I am going to mail (or e-mail) it to you. Let me know your thoughts.” Make these calls personal and specific to each

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Chapter 12 | Building Trust Before Opportunity person. An ideal situation is when you come across information pertaining to a specific issue the customer has mentioned. “You mentioned you had X as an issue; I thought this article would be useful to you.” Customers are inundated with blanket marketing e-mails. Make it personal. The order of calling and then sending the e-mail is important. Do not send a mass e-mail to every prospect. The reason you are calling and then sending the e-mail is to show dedication and dependability. You told the customer you were going to do something for them, and then you followed through. It creates two positive touch points. You should not do this in reverse order. The information you are sharing is for their benefit. It makes no sense to send an e-mail to the customer and tell them you’ll follow up with a phone call. You phone in hopes of getting the customer. If you don’t, leave a voicemail. Then send the e-mail with information that’s useful specifically to them. Incidentally, use this tactic only after you have met with the customer, not as part of your cold calling activities.

Lunch and Learn, or the Seminar The lunch and learn is a different animal than just a lunch. The straight, “Can I take you to lunch?” does not inherently have an agenda. The conversations can go in many directions, and getting around to business can be a challenge. Lunch and learns have built-in agendas. Your goal is to educate the customers and have them view it as an important learning opportunity. The most effective lunch and learns have the following components: • The lunch is held in a neutral spot—not at the customer site. • You invite multiple customers at one time. • You cover elements of industry knowledge transfer, or define a common issue that most customers face. • You offer a brief description of how your solution can help. This should not be a product pitch or a 60-minute presentation on your product. Since the customer is offsite, you create an event feel rather than a disguised sales call. This will have the effect of demonstrating stronger intent, and it will cause customers to lower their guards. You want them out of their offices and away from their computers. Granted, this is harder today, with smartphones. You don’t want them to feel that they’re being “sold to” in a place where their guard is up.

Trust-Based Selling Having multiple customers at the table is your strongest tool. Subconsciously, to the customer, it’s like you were referred to them by these 10 other customers in the room. Chances are, not everyone will meet everyone else. Each attendee has no idea whether they are existing customers or prospects like themselves. Typically, they will assume the others are existing customers. Referrals help strengthen all aspects of trust, and you can multiply that by the number of other customers attending. If you have existing customers at the event, there is a good chance they are there because they already trust your capabilities. There is a natural tendency for customers to network at these events, meaning there is a good chance your existing customers will refer you. You hope your prospect asks, “What has this vendor done for you?” Results! Your industry knowledge will continue to keep the customers’ guards down. They will be thankful it’s not just another product pitch. Events that educate people about the latest industry trends are the best attended. The lunch and learns that are product-centric have your customers thinking, “Will there be dessert?” Focusing on knowledge transfer will improve your trust meter in the areas of intent and capability. The follow-up product presentation should be brief, and should be focused on a real-life scenario that highlights a customer’s challenge, a brief description about how your solution helped, and the results you delivered for the customer. The goal behind this approach is to show compassion for the customer’s issues; this is intent. You show capability in solving the issue, and lastly, you show that you can deliver results. Keeping the how-to portion brief will leave the customer with a touch of mystery. Lunch and learns are similar to cold calling in this aspect; the goal is to leave the customers wanting more. You need customers to talk about their specific issues; obviously they are not going to do this in a group setting. You will need a follow-up appointment. Leaving the customers wanting more increases your odds of securing that follow-up. The event’s topic is the force that drives attendance (a nice venue never hurts either). If you stay with industry trends, or general-knowledge events, customers will attend. You may also want to try some of the cold calling techniques to drive attendance to these events.

Never Bash When establishing trust with a customer, a huge mistake is to bash your competition, or sow fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) about the incumbent. Customers make emotional decisions for logical reasons. If you bash the incumbent, you are effectively insulting the decisions your customer has made. Build your trust! Do not try to tear down the competition.

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 It is okay to position your offerings against a competitor’s weakness. But never bash! We have all done this in the past. I have done it. I have done it after I was told not to do it. However, now that I am better at reading my customers’ reactions, I can see uneasiness in most customers’ eyes when this bashing occurs. I can see the walls go up. It’s just not effective to bash.

When you bash you are not doing one thing to build your own trust. Your customers are judging you more than your product. They want to know if they can trust you. Build your own trust. It is okay to highlight strengths you know your competitor cannot match. This can be done in a positive manner. If you know of a competitive weakness, you can ask the customer if they are having any issues specifically related to that weakness. For example, if I know my competitor’s product is much slower than ours, I can simply ask, “Have you been experiencing any performance issues?” You want the customer to highlight their issues. It is okay to guide them to issues they may have with an incumbent. Never bash!

Give to Get This is a delicate concept. The next example in this chapter illustrates the psychological value of reciprocity; it shows the value of a gift. In today’s world, there are many rules about giving customers gifts; some companies prohibit the use of them; some customers are not allowed to accept gifts. However, when I interviewed customers for this book, there was a sense that they like to see a vendor make an investment in them. So, you must take this concept and turn it into a business value. Instead of tickets to a football game, how do you give the customer something of business value—something that does not infringe upon any employer or legal restrictions?

Example In the 1970s and 1980s, the Hare Krishnas gained a reputation by hounding passengers at airports across the country for donations. After limited success in gathering the donations they needed, they decided on a new tactic. They would hand the passenger a flower before asking for a donation. It must be noted that most passengers did not want to accept the flower, but when it was extended it was natural for the passengers to reach out and accept it. Sometimes the flower was almost forcefully placed in a passenger’s hand.

Trust-Based Selling Upon the introduction of the flower, the rate of donations went up five times. When they were given a gift, the passengers felt a sense of obligation to reciprocate. It did not matter what the gift was. How do we know that the passenger was not just paying for a flower they wanted? It turns out that 70% of the time the passengers would go around the corner and throw out the flower. (Being concerned with profit, the Krishnas retrieved the flowers from the garbage and handed them to the next passenger.) Think about it—five times the donation rate for a flower that was forced on them, all thanks to reciprocity. You see this tactic every time you go to the grocery store; it’s called the free sample. The sample has two purposes. First, they get you to try the product in the hopes you will like it. More importantly, there is a sense of obligation to purchase the item. During my interviews with customers, none ever came out and said they wanted something for free, or a gift. A majority did want to see a vendor deliver something to them as the cost of doing business. Relating this to the concept of trust, ask yourself how you can show them results and minimize the customer’s risk of time and money? You are an unproven vendor, and the customer wants you to stand behind your solution before they have to enter you into their procurement system, seek budget approval, and cut you a PO. They want to see that you can deliver something, and show some results, before they have to jump through their internal hoops. So what do you give? Like the free sample at the grocery store, your gift should have two purposes. Give the customer a taste for what you can do, and instill a sense of obligation. In order to show value, you need to first put a value on the service or product, rather than present it as free. It does not have to be a large service engagement or an expensive product. With the goal of driving a deeper level of trust, it’s best to choose something unique, and something you know you can deliver. Giving shows intent. You are not just out for yourself; you have the customer’s best interests at heart. The next two elements you can address are results and capability. Highlight a solution that will demonstrate your company’s—or product’s—capabilities and expertise. Lastly, when the customer perceives an initial value, ensure you show results against that initial perception. Trust has to be shown, not told. If you have multiple offerings and you are trying to gain a foothold, do not go to the most competitive offering you have in your bag. Is there an offering you can lead with that will get your foot in the door? Do you have something that is unique versus going head-to-head with a competitor? Think about niche selling earlier in the book. Pick a niche if possible. Initial deals do not have to be large. It’s your first step to checking the trust boxes (Figure 12-3), so that you can eventually work toward larger opportunities. Demonstrate and show trust.

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Figure 12-3.  Check off each trust element before a major opportunity

Example A classic example in the IT industry is to deliver a “gift” in the form of a free assessment. Typically, these assessments lead to roadmaps for orders. In other words, the deliverable from the assessment shows the customers their strengths and weaknesses in a specific area of their IT environment. The vendor then uses the findings of the assessment to propose solutions. The assessment is a formal needs analysis, which is part of the sales cycle. To the customer, it seems like a free professional services engagement. Let’s put all the elements of this together. First, there must be a value assigned to the service engagement. If you present to the customer a free assessment, the customer will perceive it as having no value. On the other hand, if you say, “We typically charge X for this type of service, but we are waiving the cost for you,” then the perception is one of value; one of getting a “gift.” This can be a tremendous asset to the vendor. The cost to the vendor is typically small. You use people you have on staff already. The customer sees your capability and your intent, and you can show results. And, remember the call to action from the assessment is for the customers to buy something to fix a problem. Another example, which is much softer, comes from my very first sales job when I was in high school. I sold hockey equipment at a skate shop. The customers were typically parents of the kids who were playing hockey. When they had younger kids, the parents were new to the sport, and they were not always the most informed on hockey equipment. New parents would come into the shop to purchase hockey skates, which range greatly in price and quality. Most parents perceived the price of the skate to be the best indication

Trust-Based Selling of value. However, the kids who new to the sport were usually five to six years old, and still growing. The expensive features of the more costly skates were wasted on these younger kids. I learned early on that when I told the parent that their child would be better off with a less expensive skate, they would purchase anything I suggested. The way I analyze the situation is almost like the free assessment. First I “gave” them some free advice, which resulted in a gift of less expensive skates. I showed great intention and implied great capability. There was also a sense of obligation. This tactic earned the customer trust, and developed a sense of obligation to purchase more.

Help the Customer Regardless If you truly want to provide your customers with business value, and you want to show your customers that your intent is to help them, the number one way to do that is to help them with a solution that you do not sell. As you start to spend time with the customer, she will start to open up about all sorts of problems and issues. Stay tuned to your customer’s problems. Don’t just have rabbit ears for problems you can solve. As you learn about your industry and build your network, you will have a much bigger set of solutions. Consider your professional network as an extension of your line card, or solutions you can deliver to your customers. This is exactly like a doctor who has an entire list of specialists that he engages to provide care for his patients. By understanding the compelling events your noncompetitive partners are looking for in the industry, you can help customers. What happens if you hear a customer say, “I really need to solve this problem?” You know you can’t help with it, but you network with someone who you know can help. If you have the chance, line up the customer with someone you have networked with. You just strengthened your position with your customer immeasurably. By the way, the person you brought in to help the customer now “owes you one.” Reciprocation! Your goal is to get into the position to win against an incumbent. How do get into the inner circle, the circle of trust? You are creating a sales cycle with no competition, no close, and where the proof is on your dime (Figure 12-4).

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Figure 12-4.  By giving, you can implement and measure results, without a sales cycle

With the close and prove stages eliminated, you put yourself in the position to build full trust (Figure 12-5).

Figure 12-5.  Establish trust before you engage the incumbent on a full sales cycle

Trust-Based Selling Adding value in the first stages of an engagement, for even a small deal or proof of concept, will help you develop trust. You can then enter into a larger deal on an equal playing field. By creating a “sales cycle,” like the one shown in Figure 12-4, you create trust before you have to compete against an incumbent on a larger deal. See Figure 12-5.

Partnering for Trust This book was written for the person who owns the primary relationship with the customers. Here are some typical statements that are, however, cast in stone. • Resellers or distributors typically have closer relationships with their customers than manufacturers do, unless the manufacturer is selling to the customer directly. • Resellers typically make their living based on strong relationships with fewer accounts. Manufacturers typically need more transactions at more accounts than they can handle. If you are a manufacturer, you have the “luxury” of not having to develop as deep a trusting relationship. You demonstrate capability of self and product. Then you can partner with an incumbent reseller who has already built the other elements of trust. The reseller should be strong in dedication and intent. They do not need capability; you bring that to the table. Their results are proven, but for other solutions (Figure 12-6).

Figure 12-6.  Partnering to improve trust

The concept of partnering with these accounts, and possibly choosing the incumbent reseller, isn’t new, but it’s worth pointing out how you enhance your trust. At the reseller, the opposite holds true. Being new is a lot harder for a reseller. They do not have the ability, most of the time, to partner with an incumbent manufacturer. They are probably partnered with an incumbent reseller. Your strategy for partnering should be to find a niche play (Chapter 10) with the customer, and a niche manufacturer.

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Chapter 12 | Building Trust Before Opportunity By starting a relationship based on understanding and education, you hope to instill some intent and capability. Look for areas where you might not see capability from an incumbent and fill that niche (Figure 12-7).

Figure 12-7.  Partnering with a niche manufacturer to increase trust

Now you are matched to an incumbent with a trust meter that looks something like those in Figure 12-8. The incumbent may have a full trust meter, but when you have a solution in an area where they have not shown capability or results, their trust is somewhat reduced.

Figure 12-8.  Partner to compete against an incumbent

You now have a four or five on the trust meter. This is in the range to compete.

Summary The ideas in this chapter do not comprise an exact science. The point is to think outside the circle—the incumbent’s sales circle. You can engage the customer outside of an opportunity cycle. Your time is critical. First qualify the customers—are they worth spending time with? If they are worth the time, use it wisely. You need to show value. Use the trust elements as a guide to thinking through your strategy with new customers. Use trust to build business value. In the next chapter, you learn how to manage, compete, and win opportunities.

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13 Qualif ying and Developing Opportunity However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results. —Winston Churchill Eventually you will get an opportunity. In order to develop opportunities, start with the end in mind. Recall the elements required to win a deal: CE ´V ´ P ´ DP ´ ( D + I + C + R ) = Sale 2

• You’ve developed trust on a level playing field with the competition • There’s a compelling event, which is a pain or desire with a time constraint • You have the money, budget, value, or valid ROI • You have a yes from power • You have identified the decision process

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Chapter 13 | Qualif ying and Developing Opportunity When you have trust, qualifying opportunities becomes as simple as validating the other criteria in this list. In the sales cycle, you should not cross into the evaluation stage until you have identified the budget and a compelling event, you have or can gain access to power, and you know all the steps the customer and you will go through to close the deal. Do not waste time on demos or web-ex meetings, or respond to any administrative-type request from customers, unless you have identified these elements. The good thing about having to identify these elements is that you remain focused on the customer, and on asking questions.This will inherently improve your sales skills. New salespeople often have a hard time asking tough questions about money, timeframes, access to power, and the decision process. These questions become especially hard when your pipeline is not at expected levels. You are almost afraid to ask out of fear you might upset the customer or they might not have the answer you want. Here is the truth: • The tough questions are the most professional ones. • It’s better to qualify to a “no” than waste time on a deal that has no chance.

Let Go of Poor Opportunities Qualify to a “no.” What do I mean by, qualify to a no? It means that it’s better to lose early. Simply ask yourself, would you rather lose upfront or after you have spent six months working a deal? If you can’t identify the basic components of the deal, most likely you are wasting your time. It is as much of a waste of time as competing against an incumbent without the customer’s trust. If you opt out of an opportunity, that does not mean the customer is forever lost to you. Hopefully, you have already qualified the customer as worth spending time with. It is okay for you to say no to a specific opportunity.The ability to tell a customer that you are not a good fit for a specific deal will instill trust.  It is okay to walk away from some business for which you are not a good fit. It will give you instant credibility. It shows you have the customer’s best interests at heart. You are putting their needs above your desire for financial gain.

So many salespeople and sales managers hold onto bad opportunities; they are opportunity hoarders. If you have ever seen the television show Hoarders, you have seen the absolute devastation that hoarding can bring to someone’s life. Hoarding is a psychological disorder whereby people never throw out anything. They are afraid if they get rid of something that they will lose

Trust-Based Selling everything. Their houses and cars fill up with so much junk that they can’t walk through their own homes. It gets to the point where it can be physically dangerous, and the illness ruins their lives. Do not hoard opportunities.When strategizing with salespeople about specific opportunities, many times it becomes obvious that the deal has no chance. There is no access to power, no money, or no trust. As an impartial outside observer, you can see as plain as day that the right answer is to walk from bad deals.Their forecasts become so cluttered with deals, that the real opportunities are lost in the weeds.The salesperson (and sometimes the sales manager) makes every excuse in the book to hold on to a bad lead or deal, which keeps their pipeline filled with junk. It seriously is like watching hoarders justify why they need keep coupons that are past their expiration dates. Some customers have trouble saying no.There are many buyers that just don’t like confrontation or feel they would hurt the seller’s feelings. So they say “maybe” a lot. If you sense this is the case, you must give the customer permission to say “no.” Again, this will show you are looking out for them, and that they can trust that you will not overreact.Working “maybe” opportunities can hurt trust. The customer is thinking, “can’t they take a hint?” Even though it’s the customer not being straightforward, the customer will be irritated with the constant focus on something they have no intention of moving forward with. It also stops you from discussing other issues that may be of greater concern with the customer. Qualify, qualify, qualify. Do not waste time with deals that are not qualified. Do not fill your pipeline with junk.

Developing Opportunities Is an Art Disclaimer: Developing opportunities is not the focus of this book, but it is necessary to include at some level, to show how to use trust throughout an opportunity life-cycle.

Your job is to facilitate sales and lower the barriers to purchasing.The ­greatest barriers are the qualifying elements. When qualifying, you are looking for an advantage in each element of the sales equation. Your job is to create that advantage, and to advance the sales cycle. Let’s look at each of the elements needed to develop an opportunity.

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Trust

I will assume that by now you have developed trust with your customers. If not, go back and read the first 12 chapters of this book.Without trust, you are generally not going to get the sale.

Compelling Event

Create enough pain for the customers so they need to take ownership of their problem. A compelling event is pain with a time element. For example, if my car breaks down, the pain is immediate and the time element is acute.After all, I need to get to work. If I change jobs and need to move, there is a date I need to sell my home by. The customer might have a project that supports the opening of a new store. That store will have an opening date. Sometimes, the event is more subtle. If you can save the customer with a strong ROI, the longer they wait, the more they lose or the less they gain. There are three types of pain: latent pain, admitted pain, and actively looking for a solution to the pain. Latent pain is pain customers are living with. They might not even know they have certain issues. Or, they realize that they have an issue, but they do not think there a solution, or a cost effective way to solve the problem. It is up the salesperson to either educate the customer or help the customer realize they have a specific issue. Again, the IT field offers good examples of customers living with latent pain they do not know they have.The main function of the IT department is to provide computing services to the company, so employees can more efficiently complete their jobs. In IT, customers complain when things change.When they are steady state, or status quo, there is no complaint. I used to run sales reports all the time, and most of them would take between 20–40 minutes to run. The first time I ran the reports, I asked a colleague if this was normal, and he said it’s always been that way. So, I never mentioned the issue to the IT department. If the reports suddenly took over an hour,

Trust-Based Selling most likely I would then complain. The latent pain here is that the business is running inefficiently due to poor-performing applications provided by the IT department. One of two things could be going on here. 1. The IT department is unaware of the reporting issue. 2. They are aware, but do not think there is a solution or a cost-effective solution. The second level of pain is when customers know they have a problem. They know there is a solution, but they are not ready to look for a solution. Remember our home buyer from the sales cycle discussion? This is the type of pain he had. He knew his house was too small, and he knew his commute was too long, but for a variety of reasons he was not ready to look for a new home. Typically, the customer is one compelling event away from taking action. The last level of pain is when the customer knows of the issue and is actively looking for a solution. You know the customer is at this level when you call them, or they call you, and say, “We are looking to fix that problem as we speak, and we are ready for a solution. Can you quote us, or send us a proposal? Here are the specifications we are looking for.” When you ask most salespeople what is the best type of pain, they usually will answer the latter situation—where customers are looking for a solution. After all, they are ready to buy. However, the best pain you can uncover is latent pain. When you educate a customer on an issue, or a better way of doing something, you are setting the decision criteria for the sale. The window of opportunity is wide open. The second level of pain requires that you have perfect timing: a compelling event happens, and the customer has not discussed it with other venders. The window of opportunity is very narrow. If you engage a customer after they have started to investigate solutions, you most likely are too late. The biggest impact you can have is therefore with latent pain. When you establish trust outside the opportunity, you are increasing your chances of winning opportunities in three ways. • When there is a real opportunity, you have enough trust to compete against the incumbent. • You spend time with the customer, broadening the window of opportunity. • You get the chance to educate the customer and find pains they have not addressed (latent pains).

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Chapter 13 | Qualif ying and Developing Opportunity When developing the sales cycle, I mentioned that customers will live with pain.When you’re spending time with the customer, you have the opportunity to expand the pain in a situation until they realize they have to act.When your customer complains about a stubbed toe, you make them feel as if it’s more like a broken leg. Your goal is to expand the pain to the point where the customer thinks, “Wow, this is a big problem. I need to do something about it.” The second, and maybe even more important, reason to spend time with customers is that when a compelling event happens, you want to be there to capitalize on it. You want to be the first person the customer talks to after they experience this event. You create great timing by spending more time with the customer. Business pain comes in many forms—high cost, low revenue, or huge risks. Are your customers struggling to generate revenue; do they need to reduce costs; or is there a regulatory issue that needs to be solved? When diving into pain, you want to assign a value to it.What is the cost of not solving the problem at hand, either in lost revenue or low financial efficiency? You should ask “quantity” questions, such as “How much? How many? How often?”

Example You have a meeting with a doctor, and you are trying to get him to realize how much of a problem he has. Right now, the doctor is in a status quo state. “Everything is great,” he says. He’s an “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” kind of guy. If the salesperson walks into the room and says, “You can save time using our procedure in your office, and the profit is the same,” this doctor will not connect all the dots.You need to connect the dots for him. Although the customers must draw their own conclusion that they have a problem they need to solve, it is much more effective if you guide them there. Consider a different example, where the a salesperson is attempting to sell to a doctor a solution that enables him to perform a procedure in his own office versus the way he is performing the procedure today, in a hospital. This is a classic example of a salesperson pointing out a pain the doctor does not even know he has. It’s a latent pain. The salesperson starts with, “Doctor these procedures we are talking about, how many of these do you do a week?” “Well let’s see. I would say three a week,” he replies. “And are these done in your office?” “No, they are done under general anesthesia, so we perform them at the hospital.” “How much do you make from each procedure?”

Trust-Based Selling He lists the price and the costs. “Well we charge $2,200 for the procedure, but the cost from the hospital and for the anesthesia is about $1,500, so we make about $700 per procedure.” “Not bad for an hour of work. Can I ask you how long you are actually out of the office per procedure?” “For this procedure, I try to do these all in one afternoon. So, when I have three, I am out all afternoon on Tuesday.” The salesperson starts doing the math, “So, on average you are making $2,100 per afternoon of surgery. How many office visits can you do in an afternoon?” “We do about approximately 5-6 clients an hour over four hours, so 20-25 patients in an afternoon.” “At about $90 per visit, plus miscellaneous lab tests, and so on.You are looking at about $150 per visit?” He replies, “Yes that’s about right.” The salesperson says, “So in an afternoon, at 20 patients, you are grossing $3,000?” The doctor is starting to get the picture that he is actually losing money when operating. He asks the salesperson, “How long does your procedure in the office take?” Sometimes customers in the status quo stage need to understand that there is a problem. When it comes to the business, it is always about the numbers. However, there is also a personal side to pain. How does this issue personally affect the person? If you can get to the personal or emotional level, you win.

Example While training a class on selling 101, I asked if anyone had the chance to bring a customer to personal pain. One person raised her hand, “Yes, I have.” “Well, how did it go?” The student explained, “I was talking to the customer about software to help them save time. I ask how this person spent their time during the day. The customer started listing all their responsibilities. I then asked him how much time each of these activities took.What happens if they do not get done? I was trying to get to the crucial activities.Without going into detail I was able to get the person to admit they worked more than 60 hours a week. Remembering

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Chapter 13 | Qualif ying and Developing Opportunity part of our earlier conversation (he had just moved to the area), I asked him how he found time to meet anyone. Almost in tears, he replied, ‘I have no life, I have no time to meet anyone.’ At that moment I was his number one salesperson.” I asked, “Well did you get the deal?” “Within a week!” “What is a typical sales cycle?” “Four months at a minimum.” This is an extreme example, but powerful.The salesperson got very quickly to this customer’s personal pain. His current way of doing things was ruining his personal life. This leads to the second that reason latent pain is so important. The salesperson makes the customer aware of an issue, and thus becomes a caring, trusted salesperson. Intent levels go through the roof.

Value

Value is the logic behind the emotional decision. If there is enough pain, the customer will find the money. I don’t have a budget for a new car, but if the transmission in my current car suddenly drops out, I’ll find that money somewhere. Money can also be thought of as value. If your solution can provide the customer with significant cost savings or generate more revenue than the cost of the solution, the customer will buy. Is there a return on their investment? Once they agree they have an issue, and that your solution can fix that issue, you must show them the value of the investment. Every company has a concept called the hurdle rate. Hurdle rate is the level of ROI at which the company will purchase or develop a project. Ask your customer if they know their company’s hurdle rate.The individual might not even know the term. If they don’t, explain it to them.The hurdle rate is the required rate of return. It is a more detailed ROI analysis that takes into account cash flow, capital costs, and risk analysis. In layman’s terms, it answers the question, “Does it make financial sense to purchase this product?” It will cause customers to go to their finance departments and ask if they have a hurdle rate. If they do, you may have just opened up a whole new world for your customer. Obviously, you have to believe and demonstrate to the customer that your solution does exceed this hurdle rate. Your trust

Trust-Based Selling is then improved around capability and results. You are more than a product person—you are business savvy. When you’re trying to uncover pain, many of the questions you ask are quantity questions, such as with the doctor example. When you ask how much, how many, how long, and so on, you are gathering data to support the value of the solution you will eventually present.Your goal is to figure out how much a problem is costing the customer, as well as how much you can help him save or make. Show customers how much it will cost them if they do not act.

Power

Getting a “yes” from power—someone who can make purchasing decisions— requires that the power buyer has enough pain and has the budget to solve the problem. If your solution does not alleviate the power buyer’s pain, you do not have a chance. Remember that everyone has different pains they are trying to ease over.You may be engaged with a person who is trying to solve a problem, like reports are taking too long, and that person is having to work through lunch to get his job done. However, the person that makes the purchasing decision might not care that your contact is working extra hours. She might start to care if the reports are missing critical deadlines to the business. So, you must, at a minimum, understand the pain points of the person(s) making the purchasing decisions. Ideally, you want access to power, so you can uncover the pain first hand, and help expand it for that person. One of the most difficult challenges is how to get a meeting with the person of power. There are three avenues. • Start at power.  We have discussed this concept a few times. If you start at power, you will have easier access to power in the future. Your initial primary point of contact does not need to be power, but it’s best to get to your primary point of contact via power. • Bargain your way to power.  Along the sales cycle, your customer will ask you for information, for demos, or for evaluations.They will ask for something. Use this as a tool to bargain for access to power. “Yes I will run a demo, or show you a formal ROI, but if I do, can you get me an appointment with__________?”

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Chapter 13 | Qualif ying and Developing Opportunity • Gain secondhand access. Unfortunately, the business climate has changed over the last 10 years. Secondhand access to power is becoming more and more common. And, being new, this may be where you operate until you earn more trust. If you do not start with power, your access to power may be blocked. You need to work through your main contact. However, you need to make sure you know what their boss will require in a solution, and what pains they are trying to solve. If you have your contact proposing your solution to power, help them develop the message to their boss.

Decision Process

Before you start the evaluation stage, and start jumping through hoops, be sure that you understand the decision process. What do they want to see in a demo, and why? Who is involved with the demo? How is money budgeted? What is the decision process, and what is the procurement process? If you are reacting to every customer demand and request without knowing the steps you need to win the business, you are functioning on hope. Understand all the steps necessary to close business up front. Once you know all the steps, you can keep yourself and your customer on track to close the order. Always be aware of the next step. Trusted salespeople can move deals along. The customer will have fluctuating concerns throughout the buying cycle. While you must align with these concerns, you must also continue to bring to the forefront why they are working on this process. They have an issue; you are just trying to help them solve it. If you keep the customer focused on the pain, the time-sensitive, compelling event will move the process along. Controlling this process can demonstrate more business trust than any other portion of the sale. First, understand every step. Then, take ownership of the customer’s problem. Show dedication to getting that problem solved. This involves holding the customer accountable for their portion of getting the deal done. Move your customer along; always keep them going to the next steps you define together. As you learn more about your customer’s decision process over time, you can take complete control of this process. A trusted advisor can sometimes know the customer’s process better than the customer. At this point, not only is trust strong, but the customer begins to rely on the salesperson to help him get things done. Now that I have addressed the most important aspects of managing an opportunity, it’s time to discuss how to track and report on them.

Trust-Based Selling

Forecasting Accurate forecasting should be a simple process. I also believe any administrative work a salesperson has to accomplish should also be a tool in helping them close business. All too often, forecasting becomes a chore that has to be done, and since it’s a chore, minimal effort is put forth. Therefore, the forecast is inaccurate. If you can use forecasting as a tool to drive business, you’ll try harder, and more accurate forecasting will be the result. This discussion is meant to be a guideline for creating a forecasting system. Some companies have three levels of commitment, and some have four. I am using the more simple three levels. • Pipeline—Something held in forecast as a placeholder. • Upside—There is a clear path to closed business, but not all the elements of the sales equation are satisfied. • Commit—Each element of the sales equation is satisfied. A purchase order is imminent. The age-old challenge is how to create accurate forecasts. It’s as simple as asking four questions of your existing customers, and five questions of new customers. If the answers to all four or five questions are yes, then the opportunity is a commit. If there are three or four yeses, then it’s an upside. Anything less makes it a pipeline opportunity. It’s the sales equation! The first four questions are opportunity based: • Does the compelling event land inside your forecast window? • Do you have a yes from power? • Does the customer see value? Or, is there an ROI showing value? • Does the decision and purchase process put you inside the forecast window? For new customers, there is one additional question. • Have you made a conscious effort to address each of the trust elements? You can’t determine whether the customer trusts you, you can only know what actions you have taken. The good news is you should be working only on deals that you have a great chance to close. You should be in upside with any deal that enters into the evaluation stage, because you can have most of these elements checked off.

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Chapter 13 | Qualif ying and Developing Opportunity • Is there a compelling event? If not, why are you and the customer wasting time? • Do you understand the decision and purchase processes before evaluation? • Does the customer see value? He should. The evaluation stage is about demonstrating that you can deliver the value you promised. • Can you get a yes from power? This is really the only item left for a commitment. • Lastly, you should have developed a certain level of trust before you enter into opportunity discussions. I like this method because it helps you close the deal. It tells you and management exactly what needs to be done to close the deal. If the answer is no to any of the questions above, you need to get a yes. So, a no helps you define what is the next step in the sales effort. If there is no compelling event, can you create one? If you don’t understand the decision process, or it’s beyond the forecast window, can you change it? The missing element from most forecasting methods is time. Each of these questions needs to be posed against a timeframe. You might have everything in place, but the decision process puts the deal into the next quarter. Well, that’s a “no” for that question in this quarter, but a “yes” in the next. Is there a chance that the decision process can be accelerated into this quarter? If yes, keep it upside, if no, it becomes a commit for the following quarter. This method allows you to be more accurate beyond your immediate month or quarter. Lastly, do not inflate forecasts! Work on improving your odds of winning. Do not waste time managing deals that you have very little chance of closing.

Summary Know the sales equation. It is the map you need to control the sales cycle. It is the tool you need to forecast accurately.When dealing with new customers, ensure you are inspecting for trust on each deal. Even though there are many sales processes out there, my suggestion is that you add the element of trust to it. If you do not have a process in place, you can download a simple sales process worksheet from my website at www.huntingwithtrust.com. We have now completed building trust with a a new customer, and managing opportunities while keeping trust in the forefront of your mind. In order to do this, we started in the most difficult place—a new customer with no establish trust. In the next chapter we will look at trust from the incumbents point of view and discuss strategies for keeping your customer, by defending against your competition.

CHAPTER

14 Defense A Summary We have discussed at length how trust progresses through a sales cycle. In order to develop this concept, I concentrated on the toughest starting position, when you are new to the account. But, you need to consider trust with existing customers as well. The discussion of the incumbent defending against a new competitor for an account will serve as a good summary of the book. We showed that customers place more importance on relationship after the sale. However most salespeople move on to look for new customers after the sale is made. This is foolish for two reasons. It is much easier to sell to an existing customer—you have earned the customer’s trust, therefore shortening future sales cycles. You don’t have to spend time trying to get your first appointment, and your access to the account should be much easier. Once you enter into the needs analysis phase, your customer will open up to you more, because they already trust you. Evaluations of additional services or products might not be as extensive as the first one you did. And, you probably have better access to power than you first during your first sales cycle. Secondly, without continued contact with the customer, you open the door to a competing solution, and you risk losing the customer altogether. When discussing the uphill battle you had when trying to displace the incumbent, one of the major themes was, “we have a guy for that.” Now you are “the guy.” Customers are living in the status quo once again, meaning they really do not want to work with new salespeople. They would rather work future opportunities with an account manager they already trust. Since you have gone through a sales cycle, you should have established trust, right up through the most difficult trust element: proven results. You are now the incumbent!

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Traps to Avoid You have earned customer trust, and customers now place more value on your relationship—even more than they did through your sales cycle. It is easier to win new business, and it should be easy to keep competition out. Then the question becomes, why do so many salespeople neglect existing customer, and move on to the trap of chasing opportunities? There are many reasons, but they mostly fall into the following categories. 1. You have a quota to make, and your sale to this customer is done. You need to move on to the next opportunity or customer. This may seem to make sense. For instance, you have one product, and the buy cycle for this product is once every few years. In other words, you don’t have anything to sell the customer right now. 2. You have other products you can sell the customer, but you may not be comfortable with the messaging of that particular line of products. When salespeople have multiple types of products on their line card, they tend to have a great comfort level selling one category of products. Getting out of the comfort zone is not appealing to you. 3. You’re afraid the customer might have a problem or issue. This is one of the major reasons salespeople list when asked why they don’t follow up with existing customer. If they call the customer, and she has a problem with the product or service, it will mean more work to fix the problem. That leads into the last reason. 4. You are lazy. We will not spend time on this one, because only you can fix this issue. Let’s address these one at a time, and show you why it is foolish to use these as excuses. Starting with the first reason—you don’t have anything else to sell the customer, or you are on to the next sales, or both—you should stay in touch with the customer for many reasons. Even if you don’t plan on staying with your existing company for that long. Remember, what is important to the customer in their buying decision is you, then company, then product. So continue to reinvest in “you.” Build your brand with the customer. Do not become the rep who the customer perceives as only showing up when a deal is on the table. Besides, you never know when a new opportunity will crop up. Maybe the customer is launching a new division needing your products. That’s why one of the major strategies you must use is to develop a relationship, and continue to develop it, before

Trust-Based Selling there is an opportunity. So, you need continue to build trust in the customer status quo phase. You are in a position of strength, because you only need to maintain trust, while a competitor has to work tirelessly to try to establish it. Bottom line: Put as much importance on the post-sale relationship as your customer does. The next excuse: You are not comfortable selling other solutions your company has to offer. My answer to that is—so what? As I mentioned above, your customer would rather deal with existing salespeople and companies. Even if you are not comfortable with additional offerings, you should remain focused on customer needs anyway. This will be much easier the second or third sales cycle with a customer. You already have established trust, and most likely with this trust the customer will share more with you about their issues. The new salesperson calling into the account is an annoyance, while you are welcomed. Do not be afraid of not fully understanding a new product your company is offering. Your customer is more concerned about their needs, not your solution. Remember that capability is a team effort. You maintain communication with the customer and use company resources to fill in knowledge gaps as necessary. Lastly, do not be afraid of results. If the results of your solution have not been realized by the customer, then your first sales cycle is not done. It is not done until the customer gets the results they are looking for. Your goal is to keep the trust meter full. A new competitor will try to exploit areas where your trust might be weak. The greatest advantage you have are the results you have delivered. Make sure you measure the results and make sure you don’t stop until results are delivered as promised. The most important word in the previous sentence is “measured.” Your goal is to show the customer that you deliver as promised. It covers all aspects of the trust meter.

The Value of Problems The best salespeople hope there is a problem with their customers. That is not a typo. Ask yourself about any customer service issue you have had. If the seller ran and hid, what was your satisfaction level? If the seller stepped up and fixed the problem, what was your satisfaction level? I bet it was better than if the solution just worked and you never engaged with the salesperson again? How do you feel when you get a courtesy call asking if you are satisfied? I bet pretty pleased. It is no different in B2B sales. You are dealing with people. Last question, have you ever had a seller call you and say they noticed there was an issue, and they are calling you to help resolve it, even before you called them? Example: Have you ever been called about a possible fraudulent charge

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Chapter 14 | Defense on a credit card? The bank calls you and says, “we noticed some suspicious activity on your account.” How, do you feel when you get that call? I bet it’s, “wow, they have my back.” Even if they did not cause the issue, they are helping to resolve it. That’s powerful. Or, you get a car recall notice in the mail. Your initial reaction might be, “what a hassle.” But, once the issue is fixed, for free, you are more confident in the car and the dealer that helped you. Imagine you walk into an existing customer, and say, “we just went over some data with your team, and I noticed that our solution is not working quite as well as we promised. However, we are working on identifying the issue, and we won’t stop until you are satisfied.” You will have a customer for life. So, do not be afraid of bad results. One of my favorite quotes is this: “Where there is a problem, there is an opportunity.”

You must look at it from the customer’s point of view. Your customers are emotionally committed to you and your solution. After all, the decision to purchase your product is a reflection of their due diligence. Once they have signed on the dotted line, you are more a partner than a vendor. If they have a problem, they will work with you to protect their image. If their purchase was large, their job may be at stake, so do not let them down.

Block the Competition How do you do this? We just discussed it. Stay active with your customer. The challenger to your incumbency is going to do one of two things. • The challenger will build relationship before opportunity. Make this difficult by not letting the customer think they should entertain another vendor in your market segment. • The challenger will try to penetrate the account by selling a niche solution. Figure  14-1 shows how the incumbent is using trust to gain access to your account.

Trust-Based Selling

Figure 14-1.  Competitor positioning strategy

You may not be able to protect the far right of defensive line, but don’t let the competition exploit you on the left. If you maintain the relationship, no additional feature on their solution will unseat you. And, most importantly, don’t let your competition share with the customer a feature of your own product you have not shared with your customer. Imagine walking into an account, and they say they just purchased from your competition because their solution could do X, and yours could not. However, your solution actually can do X; you just never educated the customer about the feature. Never forget: Customers buy because they have an issue. Your customer had an issue that could have been resolved by utilizing a feature on a solution they already own. That’s why you need to maintain the relationship—to continue educating the customer and continue to provide value and continue to ensure the problem is solved! Once the customer has bought from another company based on a problem you could have solved, you are back to square one in the trust game. If the competition has a niche product outside your market segment, there may not be much you can do. However, if they have a niche in your segment, be aware of it and help educate the customer about ways you can do what the niche is trying to do. At a minimum, the customer will view you as informed (capability), and dedicated.

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Summary Whether you are trying to penetrate a new account, or you are the incumbent, use trust in your selling strategies. All too often we fall into the trap that the solution/product is the main differentiator, when in fact it’s the last thing the customer bases their purchasing decision on. While trust is not the only thing, without it there is no sale. Systematically think through how your customer perceives your relationship. I believe in this book we have built a foundation and an understanding of trust, so you can systematically build and maintain trusted business relationships with your customers. I hope you see that my intention was to help you, not to sell you something. My goal was to help you understand and put to use the capabilities and dedication you need to succeed in sales. I hope you produce the results you desire.

I Index A, B

Conservatives, 85

Business relationships opportunity vs. relationship, 57–58 salespeople, 51 sales skill, 51 spending with these customers, 52 trust, 57

CRM. See Customer resource management (CRM)

Buyer process buying cycle buyer concerns, 32–33 buying process, 29–30 description, 29 evaluation, 31 example, 33 exercise, 35 implementation, 31 measurement, 31 needs analysis, 30 purchase, 31 trigger, 30 foundation, 29

F, G

C, D, E

Hurdle rate, 132

Compelling event admitted pain, 128 business pain, 130 customer’s personal pain, 132 first talk after event, 130 latent pain, 128 problem fixing pain, 129 winning opportunities, 129

Crossing the Chasm, 84 Customer resource management (CRM), 26 Customers gifts, 118

Fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD), 117 Forecasting accurate, 135 check off elements, 135 levels, 135 new customers, additional question, 135 opportunity based questions, 135 time, 136 FUD. See Fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD)

H I, J, K Innovation adoption lifecycle curve, 84 Innovators, 84–85

L, M Latent pain, 128, 130

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N Niche selling conservatives, 85 consulting process, 93 Crossing the Chasm, 84 customer relationships, 83 innovation adoption lifecycle curve, 84 innovators, 84 laggards, 86 manufacturer’s server and storage teams, 92 pragmatics, 85 product portfolio, 93 purchase cycle, 91–92 selling “conservative”, 87–88 techie, 86 trust competitor’s solution, 91 defensive line, 90 incumbent trust meter, 89 relative trust strength, 91 visionaries, 85

O Opportunity, qualifying and developing compelling event, 128–130 deal basic components, 126 decision process, 134 elements, 127 hoarders, 126 power, 133–134 sales skills, 126 trust, 128 value, 132–133

P, Q Partnering, for trust, 123–124 Power, in sales customers, help and education, 98 salespeople behaviors, 96 time importance, 96–97 Pragmatics, 85 Preplanning business/money, 76 capability elements, 70 industry knowledge, 71–72

product knowledge (see Product knowledge) sales skills, 70–71 conversation with questions, 78 customers issues, 78 elevator hook, 77 “elevator pitch”, 77 “homework” activities, 69 housing and neighborhood data, 76 online presence LinkedIn, 80 proactive, 82 skills section, 80–81 trust meter, 81 trust elements, 79 trust meter, 79 Product knowledge buyer concerns, 72–74 knowledge matrix, 74–75 levels (categories), 73–74

R Requests for proposals (RFPs), 24 RFPs. See Requests for proposals (RFPs)

S Sales American Idol, 23 buying cycles, 18 column fodder, 25 company’s finance department, 27 competitor, 27 customers, 14, 28 customers living with pain, 20 habitual purchasing, 17 leads, 27 multivendor approach, 24 opportunity trap, 23 price, 28 relationship, 25 salespeople and management, 13 status quo, 13, 21 VarTech, 14 vendor, 23 vicious cycle, 25

Index Sales equation expanded sales equation, 63 formula for success, 62 purchasing decision process, elements authority, 62 pain, 61 relationship, 62 solution, 61 understanding, 62 trust difference, new/existing vendor, 62 equal trust levels, 64–65 formula, 63 points, 64 vendor-buyer relationship gap, 65–66 Sales process authority, 38 definition, 37, 42 pain, 37 relationship, 38 sales cycle closing, 39 description, 38 example, 42 exercise, 42 implementation, 40 measurement, 40 plan, 39 providing, 39 qualification, 39 solution, 37 understanding, 38 Selling strategies behavior, 105 capability, 102 customer relationship, 107 dedication, 102 intention, 102 interview, check boxes, 101 management, 102 questioning skills basic questions expert, 108–109 listening, 108 questions, 100 real reason, 109

results, 102 sales effectiveness “double E effect”, 104 experience, 104 morale and productivity, 104 sales performance, 104 sales equation, 102 sales manager, 106 selling behavior, 101 tough questions, 103

T, U Trust Acme Technologies, 2 capability, 5 characteristics, 3 confidence, 7 customer, 12 customer perception, 9 dedication, 6 empty trust meter, 9 example, 10–11 intent, 4 measurement, results, 6 personal relationship, 10 relationship with customer, 2 salesperson and everyone at the dealership, 6 sales team, 8 trusted advisor, 2 trust meter, 9 Trust building incumbent’s business, 113–115 method to increase customers gifts, 118 free sample, 119 helping customer regardless, 121–123 never bash, 117–118 partnering, 123–124 phone call with follow-up e-mail, 115–116 product presentations, 115 results and capability, 119 seminars, 116–117 trust element, 120

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Index Trusted salespeople, 134 Trust sales cycle broken model condensed sales cycle, trusted incumbent, 49 incumbent trust vs. new salesperson trust, 48 incumbent vs. new salesperson, 48 trust before opportunity, 50 trust meter, 49 circle of trust, 47 company implementation, 45

empty trust meter, 44 evaluation of product/service, 44 full trust meter, 46 new customer acquisition phase, 44 sales cycle with the trust overlay, 46 trust progression, 43

V, W, X,Y, Z Value, 132–133 Visionaries, 85

Trust-Based Selling Finding and Keeping Customers for Life

David A. Monty

 Trust-Based Selling: Finding and Keeping Customers for Life Copyright © 2015 by David A. Monty This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. Exempted from this legal reservation are brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis or material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. Duplication of this publication or parts thereof is permitted only under the provisions of the Copyright Law of the Publisher’s location, in its current version, and permission for use must always be obtained from Springer. Permissions for use may be obtained through RightsLink at the Copyright Clearance Center. Violations are liable to prosecution under the respective Copyright Law. ISBN-13 (pbk): 978-1-4842-0875-5 ISBN-13 (electronic): 978-1-4842-0874-8 Trademarked names, logos, and images may appear in this book. Rather than use a trademark symbol with every occurrence of a trademarked name, logo, or image we use the names, logos, and images only in an editorial fashion and to the benefit of the trademark owner, with no intention of infringement of the trademark. The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms, even if they are not identified as such, is not to be taken as an expression of opinion as to whether or not they are subject to proprietary rights. While the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication, neither the authors nor the editors nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibility for any errors or omissions that may be made. The publisher makes no warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein. Managing Director: Welmoed Spahr Acquisitions Editor: Jeff Olson Editorial Board: Steve Anglin, Mark Beckner, Gary Cornell, Louise Corrigan, James DeWolf, Jonathan Gennick, Robert Hutchinson, Michelle Lowman, James Markham, Matthew Moodie, Jeff Olson, Jeffrey Pepper, Douglas Pundick, Ben Renow-Clarke, Gwenan Spearing, Matt Wade, Steve Weiss Coordinating Editor: Rita Fernando Copy Editor: Kezia Endsley Compositor: SPi Global Indexer: SPi Global Cover Designer: Anna Ishchenko Distributed to the book trade worldwide by Springer Science+Business Media New York, 233 Spring Street, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10013. Phone 1-800-SPRINGER, fax (201) 348-4505, e-mail [email protected], or visit www.springeronline.com. Apress Media, LLC is a California LLC and the sole member (owner) is Springer Science + Business Media Finance Inc (SSBM Finance Inc). SSBM Finance Inc is a Delaware corporation. For information on translations, please e-mail [email protected], or visit www.apress.com. Apress and friends of ED books may be purchased in bulk for academic, corporate, or promotional use. eBook versions and licenses are also available for most titles. For more information, reference our Special Bulk Sales–eBook Licensing web page at www.apress.com/bulk-sales. Any source code or other supplementary materials referenced by the author in this text is available to readers at www.apress.com. For detailed information about how to locate your book’s source code, go to www.apress.com/source-code/.



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About the Author A veteran of the U.S. Navy, Dave Monty has sold software and hardware solutions for over 20 years. He has been an account manager, regional manager, or director of sales, for such companies as Cisco, EMC, and Dimension Data. Monty has a passion for training, and for helping individuals and companies reach their full potential in sales. He currently lives in the Research Triangle area in North Carolina.

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